The way to set it to a "fixed size" is to make the minimum and maximum the 
same!  With 64 MBG of RAM, setting virtual memory at "twice RAM", as Don 
recommends would be 128 MB, not 10 or 80.

  However, a rule like "twice RAM" is based on the assumption that your 
amount of installed RAM is already adequate.  64MB may be on the low side.   
If you allow 192 MB or even 256 MB for swap, you may get rid of the error 
message but still be unhappy with the system's performance -- it may spend 
so much time swapping stuff between virtual memory and RAM that actual 
execution is noticably impacted.

  Are there things you can "clean up" on the drive?  I've seen some well-
used Win98 systems where the "temp" folder took up more than half the drive, 
and much of that stuff was several years old....

David Gillett


On 1 Feb 2006 at 3:03, Chilangisha B Changwe wrote:

> I did change the settings as you suggested but things dont seem to
> change. I also reconfigured the start up files but I dont seem to be
> getting anywhere. I set the minimum virtual memory to 10MB and the upper
> to 80 MB. The PC has 64MB of RAM and 600MB free hard disk space runjning
> win98. I have reformatted the disk before in a desperate bid to redeem
> the PC.
> 
> Chilangisha Changwe
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 10:37:35 -0800, "David Gillett"
> <[log in to unmask]> said:
> >   I definitely recommend setting the swap file (disk space used for
> >   virtual 
> > memory) to a fixed size, rather than letting windows grow and shrink and 
> > grow and shrink and fragment and reallocate it, and generally make it a
> > slow 
> > sticky mess.
> > 
> > On 28 Jan 2006 at 0:53, Don Penlington wrote:
> > 
> > > The usual rule of thumb is to set virtual memory at twice RAM as a starting 
> > > point.
> > 
> >   Various rules of thumb for this have been handed around.  The amount of 
> > virtual memory needed depends on the task load, and not directly on the 
> > amount of physical RAM installed.  Any rule of thumb which is based on
> > the 
> > physical RAM is *assuming* that you already have adequate physical RAM
> > for 
> > the mix of applications you want to tun.
> >  
> > > It's one of those error messages that doesn't really mean what it 
> > > says.  Although you may have plenty of RAM, some programs seem to want to 
> > > write to virtual memory regardless. If this is limited or constrained by 
> > > Windows management or lack of disk space, you could get that error message.
> > 
> >   Part of allocating memory to a process is allocating swap space to 
> > virtualize that memory.  So if a program asks the OS for memory, and
> > there 
> > isn't swap space available, the program's request is denied, and this is 
> > generally reported as "insufficient memory" without any knowledge of
> > *why* 
> > the request failed -- the code issuing the error message simply doesn't
> > know 
> > such details.
> > 
> > David Gillett
> > 
> >                          PCSOFT's List Owner's:
> >                       Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
> >                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>
> -- 
>   Chilangisha B Changwe
>   [log in to unmask]
> 
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