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In my system I am getting an error like "virtual memory is full".

Can anyone explain to me what "virtual memory" is and how to fix that issue?

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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory - This will give some explanation of what is Virtual Memory. Virtual Memory full means you may be using software(s) that used up your virtual memory. A few possible solutions: Don't run too much software at the same time, or purchase more RAM for your PC.
    – Darius
    Sep 26, 2013 at 5:22

3 Answers 3

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Virtual memory is a technique implemented in both software and hardware that treats memory as a virtualized resource. Applications manipulate memory using virtual addresses that can be mapped into physical memory as needed. Among other things, this permits an operating system to make much more memory available to applications than the amount of physical memory the system has.

There are two basic reasons virtual memory can be exhausted. One is a shortage of physical memory. The other is a misconfigured virtual memory system. On Windows machines, you can just let Windows manage your virtual memory configuration. If you are still running low on memory, that almost always indicates insufficient physical memory, and the solution is to add RAM.

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As pointed out, Virtual Memory is the ability of the OS (with support from the CPU) to provide applications with more memory than exists on the system. A secondary storage system (like a hard drive/SSD) with a much larger capacity is used to support memory allocation requests when needed.

You can fix your issue of the "virtual memory is full" by:

  1. Increase the size of the virtual memory paging file
  2. Check if a program uses a lot of memory (maybe it has memory leaks and needs an upgrade/update)
    • Open Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar and then clicking Task Manager.
    • Click the Processes tab.
    • To sort programs by memory usage, click Memory (Private Working Set).
  3. Upgrading RAM on your system.

Reference:
Microsoft Windows support site - Preventing low memory problems

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Virtual Memory is when your computer uses your hard drive as RAM. This generally slows things down, but for some programs which are used very seldom can provide memory savings. Its generally not a good idea to rely too much on virtual memory.

The "best" solution is to get more RAM, although you can increase the amount of virtual memory in Windows. See here for how Microsoft recommends doing this.

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  • There are systems that have no hard drives that have virtual memory. There are systems that use hard drives as RAM that don't have virtual memory. Sep 26, 2013 at 7:37

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