Howdy and welcome back to another exciting and fun filled adventure of The Weekly Geek!

In this exciting and fun filled article, we will continue to explore the fields of Virtual Memory (VM). For an introduction to VM check out Part 1, otherwise just follow the not so yellow brick road.

In the shortest description I know how, VM is simply a space on your hard drive that is used when your RAM (memory) sticks are full. This can be a great benefit or a nasty thorn in your side. You see many programs benefit from and even require some VM, as a rule of thumb though most everyday applications do not need it.

Microsoft and most other operating systems automatically assign VM, one of the many problems is how much space is assigned to VM and how files are shifted in and out of it. I want to go over the following issues and how to resolve them in this and upcoming articles.

1. How to determine how much VM you need
2. How much VM does your computer currently have?
3. How to change the VM size
4. Alternatives to VM – Hint: More RAM
5. How keep good stuff (like your operating system files) out of VM

Issue 1, How to determine how much VM you need.

Determining how much VM you need can and will cause a heated “Ford v. Chevy” debate among geeks and techies alike. Here I am going to give you my professional opinion and some reasons why my humble but accurate opinion is the way to go. Continue reading →

Howdy and welcome back to another exciting and fun filled adventure of The Weekly Geek!

In this adventure I want to discuss a little about Virtual Memory. No, we are not talking about Dungeons and Dragons or how you remember your past, what we are speaking of is a section of your hard drive that is used for your computers memory.

Definition: Simply stated, Virtual Memory (VM from here on out) is a section of your hard drive used in case you have to much stuff open and it all wont fit into the Random Access Memory (RAM – the “stick” of memory) your computer has.

Let’s cover some theoretical numbers here. Let’s pretend that you bought a budget computer from a large retailer and it included 128 Megabytes of RAM. Since this is a “newer” computer you have Windows XP Home edition on it. When you turn on your computer Windows installs its “stuff” things like the main program, services and needed startup routines. On my laptop this totaled 78.4 Megabytes (MB). That will leave your about 49.6 MB for everything else. Now since you are a safe computer user you will also have an anti-virus program, a firewall, a cookie watcher, one or more anti-spyware / anti-malware programs as well as a Trojan guard all running to prevent the diseases of Viruses, Worms, Trojans and Zombies. These programs on my laptop came to a total of 24.8 MB leaving me with only 24.8 MB to run everything else. Since most people do not know what is in their start up routine that is not Microsoft or security, this next area can and will greatly vary. Continue reading →