Expert: Karl Zick - 6/7/2009

Question
I received a note saying I did not have enough virtual memory.  What is virtual memory and how do I get more?  My computer tells me I have a Compaq Presario with 2.29 GHz and 4.48 MB of RAM.

Answer
Virtual memory is a computer system technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory (an address space), while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage. Systems that use this technique make programming of large applications easier and use real physical memory (e.g. RAM) more efficiently than those without virtual memory. Virtual memory differs significantly from memory virtualization in that virtual memory allows resources to be virtualized as memory for a specific system, as opposed to a large pool of memory being virtualized as smaller pools for many different systems.

Simply stated, virtual memory is an artifical extension of real memory (RAM).  

To find out more, and how you can improve it, go to http://www.fix-pc-errors.com/virtual-memory.htm