low in virtual memory

Virtual memory is that portion of free space on your hard drive that Windows uses to write programs to. Usually about 1 1/2 times the amount of physical memory in your computer. Check your hard drive for free space. If you have 512MB of memory you should have 1.5 GB free space on your hard drive for virtual memory. If you don't have that much space available, you'll have to create some. Run Disc clean up and delete unnecessary files such as temp internet files, cached web pages, etc. If that still does not provide sufficent space on the hard drive, try uninstalling any rarely used programs or programs you no longer need. you might look into getting a larger hard drive if need be.

Another possibility, is that you used a program such as Norton Speed Disk that set your page file to a fixed size.

If you need more virtual memory, you need to either run the program again, and increase the size of the page file, or change the virtual memory settings under the performance tab of system properties.

Windows will not normally use the entire free space on a drive for the page file. I recommend keeping the free space on the drive to at least twice the size you need for the page file.

My opinion of the size of virtual memory differs a little from DR's.
I recommend that the minimum amount of real (RAM) and virtual memory be no less than 1GB.
The less RAM that you have, the more important virtual memory is.

Chas

all good stuff so far, but virtual memory requirments vary depending upon the system and your needs. I try to have plenty of RAM and hard set virtual memory to a minimum of the same as RAM and maximum of double the RAM.

Reasons for this is that the default setting of 'letting Windows manage your virtual memory' means that it loads a monitoring/management program into your RAM and it stays there all the time, with hard settings this program is NOT loaded, thus giving you more RAM. Whatever the size of your virtual memory the system will set aside some RAM to keep a note off what is in it, the more virtual memory you have the more RAM set aside to track it.

I have seen a system where the suer set the virtual memory so high that there was no RAM left to do anything worthwhile as it was all in use for the virtual memory management.

Switching between applications or data a lot, then you need a lot of virtual memory (and RAM) playing a lot of RAM intensive games then you need less virtual memory. Using CAD and graphics programs usually need more virtual memory unless it is one that has its own settings for 'scratch disk' this is an application specific type of temporary virtual memory that the application sets up and uses so as not to use system virtual memory.