Every now and then I keep on getting this error low virtual memory. I have windows xp home, since past few days this error pops up, but disappers once I reboot. How do I fix it?

Cassey,
Can you check your virtual memory settings?

To quickly get a quick overview of your system settings, just click on Start, then Run and type "msinfo32".

On the bottom of the first page, you should be able to see your virtual memory configuration.

As a rule of thumb, you should have at least 1.5 times your physical memory as your virtual mem size.

With Windows XP, you can just configure the OS to manage this for you automatically. To change your virtual memory settings, right-click on My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab, then click Settings in the Performance group.

A new dialog box will open named Performance Options, click on the Advanced tab again and click Change under Virtual Memory.

You should have at least one pagefile and select the System Managed size radio button.

Hope this helps,
JV

Just follow what the great Javester says and you should be fine... (i.e. press Win Flag + Pause break key > Advanced Tab > Settings under 'Perfomance' > Advanced Tab > Change ) but... usually all the computers I've worked with that are a little old (with about 256 MB ram) seem to get this error all the time and as a general troubleshooting procedure, I always try what Javester has mentioned, however they seldom work. And they still seem to get those errors. But after install installing about 256 MB ram they seemed to work fine (and faster).

So you still get the error messages then I guess you might want to look at buying some extra ram (I think your system might have too less physical ram right now...like 256 MB).

good call javaster,
Some info on Virtual Memory:
If you wish to select your amount of virtual memory manually, you -most liekly- can handle up to 4GB of memory total, so subtract whatever you have listed under physical memory and the difference is the maximum (for a 32-bit processor) that your system can easily access.
Virtual memory is not a replacement for physical memory, but rather a place where your OS swaps information that is most used and memory for current applicaitons, as the physical memory is much faster than your hard disk.
Ex: you are running a browser and a word processor, then start playing a game... if the game requires most of your phyiscal memory to run efficiently Windows will place the memory used by your other applications into the virtual memory, to better aquip the program which is making the most memory requests. If you were to switch to another task (leaving the game open) if you do not have a massive amount of memory, you may notice the screen pause or display blank for a moment or two. This occurs while the OS is transfering the requested data from virtual back into physical.
It is not a perfect science, but without getting too technical, algorithms based on calls and sets of cahces they do a decent job.

Possibly Causes:
*Also since this is a new occurance, it is possble you have some spyware or virus running in the background using memory that you are not aware of or perhaps you have installed a new program which has a serious memory leak eating up your memory even after the program has been closed.

*If you don't care about all this, and just wish to remove the balloon.. a much as i deter you from doing this you can save the following code as removeballoons.reg run the file and click yes.. this and all other balloon tips are history:
Hope this helped

__________________

</Dream In Code>
-William. § (marvin_gohan)

Thanks for such a detailed explanation I will follow the instructions you guys have mentioned and will let you know how it goes, one thing I wanted to let you know is that I have 256mb RAM is it too low?
Is time to upgrade. And i dont have any spyware I regularly check with spybot and yahoo antispyware.

You are more than welcome,
To put it lightly.. yes.
the standard is 512MB-1GB.. with the release of vista, it may even become 2GB in the next few months. if you are careful about buying the same type (eg: pc133, or pc333 etc - it should say on the side of your ram stick) it is simply a case of upgrade rather than replace

... and i'm always glad to hear people checking for spyware regularly... most of the computers i fix are damaged because of such issues, good for me, but it does get repetitive.

__________________

</Dream In Code>
-William. § (marvin_gohan)

Yes like William it is said that it is best to upgrade your RAM, since 512 is the standard RAM recommended for any computer. But the reason you are getting those errors is because your computer is performing too many processes at once, and before you used to use your computer you probably didn't install as many programs as you have now (that's why the error messages come after a while after you use your computer).

So if you can get rid of a few processes that you don't need and RAM intensive applications such as Photoshop then you won't have any errors like that. However, the best you can do is get better ram for yourself, and I recommend getting an extra 512 MB ram... that should be more than enough if you don't use RAM intensive processes, and you won't get any errors as well.

Thanks all for helping me fix memory problem, I have upgraded the memory and dont see any more errors.

Good job guys. Good to hear that we have another happy customer. Keep up the good work.

Thank you so much, all of you as yesterday only I got the same problem , I just thought of checking syschat for the answer and I got it here, thanks again.