Windows 2003 virtual memory too low

In this article, I will talk about how Windows uses virtual memory and how you can go about configuring Windows Server to make the best use of your machine's physical and virtual memory. Virtual memory was invented at a time when physical memory was very expensive. The idea was to use hard disk space to supplement the amount of memory that's available to the system. Although this process works, using virtual memory is extremely inefficient for several reasons.

For starters, Windows can not process data that's residing in virtual memory. If Windows needs to do something with data that's in virtual memory, it must move the page containing the needed data from virtual memory into physical memory.

The problem is that the physical memory may already be full. Therefore, Windows has to use a technique called paging. Paging is the process of locating a page of data in physical memory that is not currently being used and transferring it to virtual memory to make room for the needed page to be moved from physical memory to virtual memory.

Paging really slows down a system. Furthermore, hard disk access times are measured in milliseconds, as opposed to RAM access times which are measured in nanoseconds. To put it simply, the hard disk is a whole lot slower than RAM, and the system wastes a lot of resources and takes a lot of time to move pages of data back and fourth between memory and virtual memory.

If a system becomes too low on RAM then thrashing can occur. Thrashing is a term for nearly constant paging. You have probably seen at least one situation in which a system's hard disk was running constantly with no visible results and a very sluggish response time.

Chances are that this system was probably thrashing. As much as virtual memory usage tends to slow down your system though, Windows is designed to use it.

Windows uses a file named pagefile. By default, this file and therefore the system's virtual memory is set to 1. For example, if a server has a gigabyte of RAM, then the initial pagefile size will be one and a half gigabytes. Notice in that paragraph that I said that the initial size of the page file will be a gig and a half.

If the system has insufficient memory, or if your server is running demanding or leaky applications, then Windows may expand the size of the page file to prevent the system from running out of memory.

This is where things get tricky. There is a very fine balance between not giving Windows enough space for paging, and giving the operating system too big of a page file. As you read the remainder of this article, you may find yourself wanting to make adjustments to the Windows pagefile. Therefore, I want to show you up front how to change the pagefile size. For the purposes of this article, I am assuming that you are running the bit version of Windows Server Answered by:.

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Plans and Pricing. Contact Us. Certified Expert Program. Credly Partnership. To resolve this behavior, increase the size of the paging file. To do so, follow these steps as appropriate for your operating system. In the Virtual memory pane, click Change to increase the paging file.

With virtual memory, the computer can use hard disk space as random access memory RAM. The computer uses virtual memory to augment the ordinary RAM that is installed on the computer.

If you reduce the size of the paging file, the Office program may not start correctly or may not start at all.