Memory Issue

Lately this past month I've been having memory problems. I haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary and have been running the same programs I always run. Firefox + an instance of FFXI. Every so often during the day a message pops up telling me I am running low on virtual memory... What is causing this? I thought it was a virus so I scanned and removed whatever it found but the problem is still there. Sometimes if I leave my PC on it will shut down all my programs by force, normally it says to shut down POL when the msg pops up. This is also happening on my laptop... Which runs the same programs.

"Close programs to prevent information loss" "Your computer is low on memory. Save your files and close these programs:

PlayOnline Viewer.

I've been running the same programs since forever and have no idea what is going on.

I have the same issues, normally just shutting firefox down for a few mins every few hours when I start to get the lag fixes the issue. I don't get the low memory pop up after I started doing that.

How much RAM and virtual memory do you have?

4GB RAM

Next time it happens, try and screen cap your Task Manager, see if there is anything odd going on there.

You possibly need to increase the amount being allocated for virtual memory. Open control panel and click on the System icon, go to advanced tab and select settings (performance). Increase the amount allocated to about 6000 in both boxes, click set and then apply then reboot.

What could have changed it that I would need to reset it though? Like now I have the exact same programs running and its at 1.97 GB memory usage. Sometimes I won't even have firefox open and it will still pop up saying I have low virtual memory, I go check and its at 2.97 GB with only POL on

I'll try this, maybe it will show what could be causing the problem.

I just recently started getting this same thing and have changed nothing that I normally do. It seemed to have started after the latest update.
I also have 4g of ram and recently upped my virtual to 1g and still have the problem but only when I leave ffxi on for a long period of time, wonder if there is a memory leak in it somewhere

im having the same problem too

Your virtual memory decrease could also mean your hard drive is getting full or acting up since virtual memory is simply a cache of memory allocated from your HDD that acts outside of your own RAM.

I have 168 GB/931 GB on my HD

Might want to check your sectors and make sure everything is functioning as intended...

Sorry SE jokes aren't funny.

Might come down to simply increasing your virtual memory threshold.

You have to go in and manually adjust your virtual memory. I had the same problem and so did a few people I know. What you do is go into your Control Panel > System and Security > System > View amount or RAM and processer speed. In the left of that window, click "Advanced System settings", then the "Advanced" tab. Under "Preformence" click "Settings...". Then tab over to "Advanced" in that window. Then here under "Virutal Memory" click "Change". Ok here is what your going to do. There's a check box that says like "Automatically adjust blah blah blah" uncheck that and check the box about halfway down that says "Custom Size". Based on the amount of RAM you have is what your going to put here. A rule of thumb is the x3 the amount of RAM or something like that. But I see that you said you have 4gigs so you can set yours like mine, and my laptop is mainly for web surfing and this game XD. The initial size i set to is 11658mb and max is 55000mb and that fixed all my problems. If you ever get it again you can just readjust it though easy. Click set, then ok and BAM your golden. Hope this helps others since this game is getting bigger XD.

It's usually RAM x 1.5 for virtual memory. The virtual memory dialog window will tell you the recommended amounts.

Also, I recommend to have both minimum (initial) and maximum virtual memory sizes to be the same size.

Example: If you have 4 GB (4096 MB) of RAM, then virtual memory should be 6144 MB (4096 x 1.5).

I have 8 GB of RAM (8 x 1024 = 8192 MB), so my virtual memory is set to 12288 MB.



Also, be sure you have enough disk space for it. You can (and I've seen it happen since XP days) run out of virtual memory if your hard drive has no more space to allocate for it. Happens mostly if you let the system manage the size or dynamically allocate it (i.e.- set Initial size to be less than the maximum size).

I said pretty much that^^^^ in post 6. lol

Sorry for the necro, but I have recently started experiencing exactly this problem. At first I thought it was windower, so I asked over on those forums and was told there to adjust my virtual memory, similar to the suggestion here. I changed it from allowing windows to decide on the file size to 4096MB, which was a number suggested there. That was only a temporary fix for my problem. About a week later, it started happening again.

If I don't get a notification telling me to close POL, then every 10-12 minutes, FF's frame rate will drop to ~1-2fps and my entire computer will lag dramatically for about 3-5 minutes. It's very frustrating, as actually closing FF still doesn't fix the problem. It seems to need to ride out the problem in the 3-5 minute window no matter what I do. Occasionally I can make this stop happening by closing EVERY other thing outside of FF, but sometimes even that is not enough and I will have to reboot my computer or it'll continue having memory problems. It seems like POL just has some kind of memory leak issue, because sometimes when I pop open the task manager to check on it, it'll be running at 2-2.5x the normal size (usually hovers around 150k), although it looks like nothing else is affected.

Now, sometimes this slowdown will occur even when I am not running anything else and have not opened anything but FF since startup. I'm confused and quite honestly starting to get really annoyed. Tried reinstalling POL, reinstalling windower, but have not yet tried reinstalling FF itself. I only have the original set of discs put out in 2003, so the update that follows a reinstall is a whole day-long event. I'm also really not into dropping any money on a newer set of discs to reinstall from if ultimately it looks like the answer is simply that my computer no longer LIKES running FF.

Some facts:
- Using windows 7, 64 bit
- Have 8 gigs of RAM (7.75 usable, according to my system specs)
- Have an AMD Athlon II X4 630 processor
- Only FF causes this issue, so at this point it does not seem to me as though the problem lies with my hardware. I do have a couple of other MMOs on my system, and I have never experienced a similar problem.

Any further suggestions/observations, or updates from other sufferers? Did the fix recommended here have a positive impact on your problem? Is there potentially something wrong with my machine rather than FF, and if so, how can I tell? I'm all out of ideas.