Have i done the right thing

[whothis]

Upgraded a friends computer recently,coming from Win98se to XP Pro ,installed extra 256mb ddr ram now hes got 484mb ddr .

Just had a phone call of him saying he keeps getting a warning that memory is low .

Now i assigned 128mb in the bios to the on board graphics leaving him with 256mb to run winxp pro ,have i done the right thing here ...?

Thanks .

BTW : hes not a gamer or into grafics just internet and office apps .

[dannymking]

It could be the harddrive space and virtual memory..

What's the HD setup..

If not then it sounds like some memory has died.. 256Mb is the minimum spec for XP

[whothis]

It could be the harddrive space and virtual memory..

What's the HD setup..

If not then it sounds like some memory has died.. 256Mb is the minimum spec for XP

The h/d space is fine, dont know what virtual memory is ..?

[dannymking]

Page File... it is automatically set by windows.. you could increase this size to your own liking

[..:RUDI:..]

hehe, like me, I had a 5gb paging file

[dannymking]

That's not always a good Idea Rudi as by setting that size you are reducing your overall harddrive down by 5gb, unless you have multiple harddrives or 400gb's its silly as you will not need that much.

[StevenHickerson]

Actually for some people it is a good idea to have a page file that large. Last week I made some errors in some code and ended up pulling 3.5gb of virtual memory (windows had to increase it beyond the 1gig I had set). And since it was using so much of it up and having to change on the fly it brought my system to a crawl.. took 20 minutes to shut itself down properly (didn't want to just turn it off and corrupt the program I was working on).

As for the original question, I've never seen windows give a warning if hardware memory is running low so I'd almost say 100% it's virtual memory and you just need to go in and increase the pagefile some.

[kfcSmitty]

you sure theyre both compatible memory sticks? Some companies make RAM that wont work with any type but their own. IE) IBM

It will read properly sometimes, but cause lots of errors at other times

[visualAd]

You can change the amount of Virrtual memory by going to Control Panel->System->Avanced->Performance Options and click on the button to change the size of the virtual memory.

As a guide, you should set the virtual memory size to at least double that of your system RAM. However, do not make the range between the minimum and maximum size too large. Unlike UNIX systems, Windows uses a file for virtual memory and while this allows it to be resized, it means that it can become fragmented and thus very slow.

[whothis]

Ok ill give it a bash tonight thanks everyone. yes the memory ok and compatible.

Thanks again