How to Increase My System's Virtual Memory

Virtual memory is a disk space reserved on a computer hard drive that may be used as the extension of the random access memory (RAM). Windows operating system utilizes the virtual memory storage if running applications exceed the physical size of RAM. The increase of the virtual memory in the system prevents RAM overflowing and system crashes.

Instructions

In Windows XP

1. Log in to an administrator account in Windows and click the "Start" button in the lower left corner of the screen.

2. Click "Control Panel" and switch to the "Category" view on the left panel. Then click on "Performance and Maintenance."

3. Click "System" and select the tab "Advanced."

4. Click "Settings" under "Performance" and select again the tab "Advanced."

5. Read the current size of the virtual memory in the field "Virtual memory." For example, "Total paging file size for all drives: 2046 Mb."

6. Click "Change" and type the desired virtually memory size (in Megabytes) in the fields "Initial size" and "Maximum size." Enter the same amount of memory in both fields to increase the system performance.

7. Click "OK." When prompted click "Yes" to restart the computer.

In Windows Vista

1. Log in to an administrator account in Windows and click the "Start" button in the left lower corner of the screen.

2. Click "Control Panel" and then click "System and Maintenance."

3. Click "System" and choose "Advanced system settings" on the left panel.

4. Select the tab "Advanced" and click "Settings" in the field "Performance."

5. Select the tab "Advanced" again and read the current size of the virtual memory in the field "Virtual memory." For example, "Total paging file size for all drives: 2000 Mb."

6. Click "Change" and uncheck the box "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives." Select the radio button "Custom size."

7. Click "Change" and type the desired virtually memory size (in Megabytes) in the fields "Initial size" and "Maximum size." Enter the same amount of memory in both fields to increase the system performance.

8. Click "OK." When prompted click "Yes" to restart the computer.

References

• "Virtual Memory in Windows XP," Alex Nichol, Feb 21, 2006.
• "Windows Vista: The Missing Manual", D. Pogue, 2006.