Win XP (Pro) - The correct size of virtual memory

Nobody can tell you that without more information about your system.

They can guess and suggest things like the Microsoft engaged Support Engineer "experts":

"Increase the value of the initial and maximum size to a higher value"

That makes no sense at all, but it is advice from these Microsoft engaged Support Engineer alleged "experts".

Do you increase by 10, 100, 1000, a meelion?

If your paging file is out of whack you might see stuff like this:

Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low: Your system is low on virtual memory.  Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file.

That means Windows XP is letting you know it is doing it's job.  The message is not an error message - it is an informational message.

If XP thinks the size of the paging file (usually c:\pagefile.sys) is too small to accommodate your current operations it will adjust the paging file to make the paging file larger and display that message as it does so.  It is not necessarily a "problem", but the message is annoying.

From my notes:


Unless you know more about managing memory that Windows XP, it is usually best to just let XP handle the size of your virtual memory paging file.

To see what your current settings are, right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced tab, Virtual Memory, then click the Change button.

Make a note of the current settings in case you need to change them back later.

The best setting for the Paging file size is usually going to be:

System managed size

Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced tab, Performance... Settings, Advanced tab, Virtual memory... Change.

Make a note of the current setting so you can change things back later if you have a problem.

If it is not already, set the Paging file size to:

System managed size

Be sure to click Set (to set it), OK a few times to save the adjustments and then restart your computer.

Windows XP will try to allocate a paging file approximately 1.5 times the total amount of the RAM installed in your system.  Letting Windows XP handle the paging file size is adequate for most configurations.

If your system is not set to System managed size, you need to determine how it got changed and why (usually some wrong reason), make a note of the current settings so you can change them back later if needed, then change the setting to System managed size, click the Set button and then click Apply to commit the changes (you will be asked to reboot).  

"Because somebody told me to" is not a good reason to start making adjustments to the paging file size.  Just adjusting it to make it larger by some arbitrary value may relieve the symptom of the problem and stop the message, but may not result in the best configuration for your system.  

Any advice to "Increase the value of the initial and maximum size to a higher value" are uninformed ideas that come from not knowing how XP works - how much do you increase it and what if you increase it too much?

If you want your system to run as efficiently as possible, you need to figure out what is going on and fix it properly and not just start trying things or make some arbitrary adjustments.

The size of the paging file may really need adjusting, but you should at least try to know what you are doing and why you need to do it.  It is unlikely that anybody can tell you how to adjust your settings properly without more information.

If you are not sure what the best settings are or if you are not sure what your settings need to be and need some help looking at your stuff, do this:

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

msinfo32

Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select All (Ctrl-A), Copy (Ctrl-C) and then paste (Ctrl-V) the information back here in your next reply.

There will be some personal information (like System Name and User Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just delete the personal information from the pasted information.  

This will minimize back and forth Q&A and eliminate guesswork and assumptions.