I have an old e machine running XP, and last week I was playing a game on facebook and it kept flashing up saying virtual memory too low and was being increased. Most of my system is free space, so I didn't understand. After a few days of this, my computer or monitor won't come on. On initial power up, the moniter says going into power save mode and won't do any more. Is my hard drive gone, or something else? Don't know what to do do to get the screen to come up. I like to keep my old system working for the grand kids to play games on. I have an old Hard drive out of another XP Dell that I haven't destroyed yet that was working, just the rest of the system died. Will that work to replace this one. No problem tossing this one, but I just like to tinker. Just bought a new computer with windows 7 OS.Replaced the battery, no luck. Thanks for any ideas.
Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations SkipVought on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
virtual memory
- Thread starter nelliebee
- Start date
rclarke250
Technical User
I believe the 2 problems are unrelated. A bad hard drive could keep a system from turning on, it's rare. Only a direct short of the 5v line or 12v line would cause this on the controller card of the hdd. Just remove power from the hard drive, and try to turn the machine on. If it doesn't post, then you have another issue. I would look at the power supply, or check the system board for blown capacitors.
Virtual memory too low, usually is a result of either not enough physical memory, and you should have 1-2 GB in an xp system of today. and the other is crappy coding of the Facebook game causing a memory leak, and since its a Facebook game, I'd lean to the second causing that issue.
Virtual memory too low, usually is a result of either not enough physical memory, and you should have 1-2 GB in an xp system of today. and the other is crappy coding of the Facebook game causing a memory leak, and since its a Facebook game, I'd lean to the second causing that issue.
goombawaho
MIS
Right - the "not turning on problem" could be caused by multiple things. How much memory do you have in that machine? You also need to make sure that the PAGE file settings aren't set incorrectly though it sounds like it's set to "allow windows to manage page file" or whatever the verbiage is, which is okay. And you need 1 - 2GB or RAM per rclarke250
You have to troubleshoot the problem with the computer from scratch - meaning don't assume anything in particular is the cause. Usually, a bad hard drive will NOT prevent the computer from starting up to the point where it says "insert bootable media" or "operating system not found" or something similar.
When you press the power button, does anything happen at all (any lights light up or fans start turning)? If not, possibly bad power supply, bad motherboard or power switch not working. If you aren't experienced at computer troubleshooting, you may NOT want to proceed at troubleshooting each of these as they get complicated.
You have to troubleshoot the problem with the computer from scratch - meaning don't assume anything in particular is the cause. Usually, a bad hard drive will NOT prevent the computer from starting up to the point where it says "insert bootable media" or "operating system not found" or something similar.
When you press the power button, does anything happen at all (any lights light up or fans start turning)? If not, possibly bad power supply, bad motherboard or power switch not working. If you aren't experienced at computer troubleshooting, you may NOT want to proceed at troubleshooting each of these as they get complicated.
One thing to point out: A bad hard drive can cause a system to not power-up, though it is rare. I've seen it happen, and it's not fun figuring that one out, b/c you don't expect it. That is when it is causing electrical issues only, I believe, which again is pretty rare.
As for your issues, here's what I'd do:
1. Try a different monitor - if the screen isn't coming up, but fans spinning, lights, etc, then it could be the monitor - causing one problem anyway. If nothing still, it could be the graphics adapter, so if can swap that, then do.. otherwise, you can try the other options just to see..
2. Open the case and look for bad capacitors as is mentioned by rclarke250. Check closely to see if any are leaking. If they are, then whatever component has the leaky capacitors (usually the motherboard, but it could happen with anything that has capacitors) is toast or probably not worth fixing unless you also like to do soldering on motherboards.
3. Unplug the hard drive, and try turning the system on. If it'll at least give you some errors like no boot disk found or something, but will do more than with hard drive connected, then you can pretty well assume that IS the problem.
4. If that doesn't tell you for sure, try pulling out all but 1 stick of RAM/memory, assuming you have more than one. Try booting that way... and test all RAM sticks the same way.. if you find a problem stick of RAM, then that's the issue.
5. If no power at all, then it's more likely to be the power supply something from the wall, or bad capacitors on the motherboard - in the power area.. or CPU/Ram area..
.... IF YOU CAN GET PASSED THE SCREEN PART ....
As for the virtual memory changing, etc... it makes me wonder if you're running low on space, assuming Windows is managing the virtual memory...
IF you can get past all of that, then running a system cleanup utility or built-in cleanup might work. For instance, you could run CCleaner or Glary Utilities to tune/clean things up... but you've got some other work to do before you even get here.![[smile]](/data/assets/smilies/smile.gif "[smile] [smile]")
Keep us posted.. maybe I'll remember to check back on the progress.
"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57
As for your issues, here's what I'd do:
1. Try a different monitor - if the screen isn't coming up, but fans spinning, lights, etc, then it could be the monitor - causing one problem anyway. If nothing still, it could be the graphics adapter, so if can swap that, then do.. otherwise, you can try the other options just to see..
2. Open the case and look for bad capacitors as is mentioned by rclarke250. Check closely to see if any are leaking. If they are, then whatever component has the leaky capacitors (usually the motherboard, but it could happen with anything that has capacitors) is toast or probably not worth fixing unless you also like to do soldering on motherboards.
3. Unplug the hard drive, and try turning the system on. If it'll at least give you some errors like no boot disk found or something, but will do more than with hard drive connected, then you can pretty well assume that IS the problem.
4. If that doesn't tell you for sure, try pulling out all but 1 stick of RAM/memory, assuming you have more than one. Try booting that way... and test all RAM sticks the same way.. if you find a problem stick of RAM, then that's the issue.
5. If no power at all, then it's more likely to be the power supply something from the wall, or bad capacitors on the motherboard - in the power area.. or CPU/Ram area..
.... IF YOU CAN GET PASSED THE SCREEN PART ....
As for the virtual memory changing, etc... it makes me wonder if you're running low on space, assuming Windows is managing the virtual memory...
IF you can get past all of that, then running a system cleanup utility or built-in cleanup might work. For instance, you could run CCleaner or Glary Utilities to tune/clean things up... but you've got some other work to do before you even get here.
Keep us posted.. maybe I'll remember to check back on the progress.
"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57
Virtual Memory too low may have nothing to do with your hardware. It may be a problem with a specific program. Typically a program runs and uses ram then uses virtual memory which is swap space on the hard drive. Normally the swap space has a size limitation to keep from overwriting important hard drive data.
Some program is using virtual memory till it is almost used up. Programmers call this a memory leak. The only way to find this is to uninstall all your programs one at a time. However, the problem may be a microsoft program which is part of Internet Explorer or some other program it uses like a google program or some game or utility program or spyware that you downloaded from the Internet. These kind of problems have driven me crazy because the only way to determine what is causing it is to uninstall programs one at a time.
Of course there is another drastic technique of completely reinstalling the operating system. I try to avoid doint this. However, after a few years sometimes programs become corrupted and the windows registry becomes unmanageable. Often this is a .SYS or system file that is used to run the OS. Some program used it at one time or maybe some kind of driver is corrupted or faulty. This could be related to some system functions like video drivers, Networking, or even a video player like VXD or an Abode Flash Player or similar item.
Some program is using virtual memory till it is almost used up. Programmers call this a memory leak. The only way to find this is to uninstall all your programs one at a time. However, the problem may be a microsoft program which is part of Internet Explorer or some other program it uses like a google program or some game or utility program or spyware that you downloaded from the Internet. These kind of problems have driven me crazy because the only way to determine what is causing it is to uninstall programs one at a time.
Of course there is another drastic technique of completely reinstalling the operating system. I try to avoid doint this. However, after a few years sometimes programs become corrupted and the windows registry becomes unmanageable. Often this is a .SYS or system file that is used to run the OS. Some program used it at one time or maybe some kind of driver is corrupted or faulty. This could be related to some system functions like video drivers, Networking, or even a video player like VXD or an Abode Flash Player or similar item.
You do not have to completely uninstall any programs. You can simply disable them from starting up if they are starting with the system.... or otherwise just don't run them. It would be far easier to:
1. disable all unnecessary processes and services
2. reboot
3. re-enable the first item that comes to mind as a possible culprit
4. reboot
5. check for issues
6. if that makes no difference, check the next instance.
By the way, this post is already pretty old, and the person asking the question has apparently not made an attempt to even read the responses, so perhaps it wasn't important to them at all.
Also, if it is being caused by a particular process, an even easier step MAY be to check the processes list under task manager, and see what is eating the most RAM. Then do some searching to find to which application the process is related.
Besides that, the initial culprit would be the facebook flash game, which is mentioned in the original post:
1. disable all unnecessary processes and services
2. reboot
3. re-enable the first item that comes to mind as a possible culprit
4. reboot
5. check for issues
6. if that makes no difference, check the next instance.
By the way, this post is already pretty old, and the person asking the question has apparently not made an attempt to even read the responses, so perhaps it wasn't important to them at all.
Also, if it is being caused by a particular process, an even easier step MAY be to check the processes list under task manager, and see what is eating the most RAM. Then do some searching to find to which application the process is related.
Besides that, the initial culprit would be the facebook flash game, which is mentioned in the original post:
nelliebee said:
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Question
- Locked
- Question
- Locked
- Question