Topic: Error message

[Clive]

My computer (XP Pro) runs slower and slower throughout the day and it eventually grinds to a halt wherupon I have to wrestle to regain control of it by forcing a re-boot.  Now I have just had a message to say:

Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file.

What does it mean?   

[Simon]

It probably means your virtual memory setting is too low, Clive.  This should help, and they will even fix it for you, if you dare to let them! 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826513

[Clive]

Thanks very much for that Simon.  Let Microsoft fix it?     I've adjusted both settings upwards so we'll see what happens.  In the processes tab of task Manager it was showing 4 entries of YBrowser.exe totalling 1,100,000K which would explain the slowdown.  Presumably that's my web browser?  Avant a clue really.   

[Simon]

Apparently, YBrowser is now part of Avant, much to the disdain of this bunch of users:

http://forum.avantbrowser.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=28120

[Clive]

Hmmmm.  You are a mine of information tonight Simon!     I too had always assumed that YBrowser was Yahoo and related to my BTYahoo mail.  I'm sorry I upgraded to the new version of Avant because it's been nothing but trouble.  I keep getting kicked ouit of forums - particularly in the evening after the machine has been left on all day.  THIS website explains a lot and is worth a read even if you are not suffering problems of this nature.  It says:

You'll see in this Task Manager shot that Mozilla Firefox is taking up the most virtual memory at about 237 MB, with Internet Explorer the next biggest at about 81 MB. (the number of KB divided by 1024 equals MB) For both, this is the consequence of leaving them open for more than a week straight. Almost every application will use more memory the longer you keep it open, though some are worse than others. This is one reason that Windows becomes more and more unresponsive the longer you keep it running, and why you end up eeding to restart your computer periodically.

Once you determine which process is using more virtual memory than it should, you need to determine what the process is. Some are pretty obvious, like winword.exe is Microsoft Word, iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer, and so on. Others aren't so obvious. The best way to determine the source of a specific process is to use a search engine to search for the Image Name as shown in Task Manager.

Resolution

Now that you know which application is causing the problem, let's resolve it.

One common thing to try is to uninstall and reinstall the offending application if possible. Searching the Internet, and checking the support site of the software vendor would be the next two steps I would try.

[Simon]

Firefox has always been a memory hog, although, that article may be a little out of date.  My SeaMonkey is running at 106Mb, but that includes the mail client.  I wonder what the equivalent would be if you had IE and Outlook on the go?

All joking aside, it does seem as though Avant is struggling a bit now, so maybe time for a change, Clive?

[Clive]

No!!!! I shall cling on until the bitter end.     Since I changed those settings I've had no problems!  No log-outs.  No slow downs.  I am master of my own computer again.   

[Simon]

[D-Dan]

Firefox has always been a memory hog, although, that article may be a little out of date.  My Monkey is running at 106Mb, but that includes the mail client. 

Your Monkey is what?!? - And why are you talking about it here?

[Clive]

 

[Simon]

What happened to the Sea bit? 

[Rik]

It sank?

[Simon]

[D-Dan]

What happened to the Sea bit? 

I didn't want to see your Monkey

[Simon]

Stop aping around!