System low on Virtual Memory

Sometimes when I'm running SL things kind of hang for a bit and the windows task bar pops up and displays a "system low on virtual memory" in the tray area.

After a little pause this will clear. It comes and goes randomly.

I believe the settings I have on my windows xp pro are to let windows manage virtual memory settings. Is there a better way, when running SL?

Any help I can get to optimize these settings would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Andy

Isnt that error cuased by low hard drive space?

SL uses a lot of hardrive space in the cache.

Im sure the techno geeks (ahem) Technically sophisticated Members of the forums can elaborate.

That makes sense, because it generally occurs after being logged in for quite awhile.

I have plenty of space on my hard drive, but maybe there is a cap limit set on the swap file size.

Virtual memory is pre-allocated, so it's not a free space issue.. If your swap file is being hit that hard, it's a good indicator that you don't have enough physical RAM in the machine.. let's start there - what have you got?

There are still several memory leaks in the viewer which can cause its memory footprint to grow over time, and this may be a contributor to your problem, but not a substantial one. From the looks of things, we can expect some fixes to this before too long.

Maybe.. On Windows, you can select the truly evil setting of letting the OS dynamically size your swap file for you.. Not sure what the math is on how that works but it could be that it tries to cut down the pagefile size as free hard drive space grows scarce.

Either way, I agree that he's probably low on RAM. Closing other apps you have running and (if you always leave your machine on) rebooting more often may help.

Can't remember exactly what I've got in that machine. I'm not there now. It's either 256 mb or 512mb I've been thinking about adding more anyway.


I'll check later on.

Thanks

SL is pretty memory intensive.. Upgrading to 1GB will help. Upgrading to 1.5-2GB will help a ***lot*** more.

I'm shocked you're even able to play at all. SL recommends 512Mb as a rock bottom minimum requirement. 1-2Gb is the recommended amount. You should run to your local shop and increase your RAM. The way things are right now, you're slowly frying your HD.

I am?

I mean, I know I'm not who you are talking to, but I'm in the same situation.

You mean this is damaging my computer?

I think I will run and get some more ram.

coco

Hard drivers are pretty robust things, escessive paging I guess could shorten the life but servers read the disks all the time ( just think of the hammering the asset server's disks in SL get - or even just a popular sim's disks ) so don't worry too much about it.

Don't worry, while slowly frying your hard drive sounds alarming. It's just a colorful way of saying that I'm putting a lot of wear and tear on it.

Always remember that hard drives are mechanical devices. They can go at anytime. Regardless of what you are doing with them. In RL I'm actually a network admin and hardware tech. I take care of a small client server network with about 35 end users on it.
Between that and side jobs, in my experience hard drives can go unexpectedly.

I've never been a gamer, all the pc's that I take care of are for business use. Usually whatever hardware I'm dealing with is well beyond what is needed for the job at hand. The only paging file problems I've encountered at work have been fixed by optimizing how the page file is managed.

I checked and I only have 256 meg in that machine at home. Gonna go with a gig or two and see if that helps.

Thanks to all who responded,
Andy

The answer is low disc space... set the OS cache size to 1.5 times your ram space, using a minimum of 2gb's as a bench mark (don't use dynamic settings). Set SL's cache to as high as you can afford free space over and above that. Clear the rubbish from your hard disc and defragment it.

Use disc scan function and cold reboot your PC and let that programme run upon startup. Making sure you have checked 'auto fix errors, and scan for bad sectors' before the cold reboot.

Your low disc space error maybe due to increasing bad sectors which are not accounted for when the OS reports free space available. If you do get bad sectors reported (which will be shown in the report after scan disc is complete, look out for that!), it's time to backup your important information and change your hard disc before it fails completetly.

Bad sectors do appear during the lifetime of a HD but if you run scan disc once a week after the first time, and more are reported, you are at risk of major failure.

HD's used on server networks are 'industrial quality' and have a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) rated at 120,000 hrs +, the 'standard' HD's used in the vast majority of systems have a MTBF rating of 50,000 hrs, bearing in mind the HD is rotating all the time you have your system turned on and therefore counts against this time frame.

You're going to like SL a lot more with 2GB. Getting to 1GB will help a lot but SL, in my experience, will be even happier with 2GB.

Similar to what AWM suggests, checking your pagefile size after changing RAM is probably a good idea but avoid the dynamic-size setting like the plague.

I actually improved my performance by setting the page file to the custom size and making it 1GB

I'm still going to get more RAM, but this temporary fix should hold me off for a while. I drag my feet when it comes to buying pc hardware.

Thanks for all of your help,

Andy

Its not a temporary fix.. its a permenant one.. Windows dynamic page file not only thrashes your HD but serverely defragments it as well. Run Defrag and a registry cleaner and your system will improve.

Just my unsolicited two cents - I am a newbie and had constant crashes - it was horrible! Almost gave up entirely. I checked my laptop and it only had 512 - ran out- bought 2 gigs and I haven't had to look back! It's a beautiful thing!