Windows 7 forum: "Your computer is low on memory." But why?!

How much RAM do you have? Where is the message coming from? What do you have running when you get this message? Are you low on RAM or disk space or both? We could give you much better answers if you'd post the answers. 60 GB is usually not enough for a Windows 7 hard drive, if that's all you have. While you can install Windows 7 in as little as 20 GB, that's not a practical minimum because of many things including applications, restore points, paging file, hibernation file, updates, user data, etc. etc.
XP Mode runs very well in both 32 and 64 bit systems, but it's only available for the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate versions of Windows 7. You probably have the Home Premium version. Your best option if you need XP Mode would be the any time upgrade for $90, but understand that it will take more resource including disk space and RAM.
Please provide the requested information and we can give you more specific things you can do.

I'm glad you've got your PC working normally. Before I upgraded my laptop from 4 GB to 8, I would get a similar message about memory from my Norton Security Suite, and like in your case it was always in regards to IE. I've found that Chrome uses less RAM than IE, so you might want to download it from http://www.google.com/chrome and use it instead of Internet Explorer.
Regarding your tight disk space, if you can manage to scrape up as little as $47, you could replace that SSD with a 250 GB hard drive by imaging the SSD, replacing the drive, then restoring the image onto the new drive. It would be slower booting up and loading programs, but you'd have more than 4 times more disk space that way.
Regarding getting a new computer, I know some hospitals donate their used computers to members of the clergy, so you might want to put in a request and see what they could do for you, especially if you can find one administered by people of your religion. I did some volunteer work with a Catholic organization refurbishing some of these, so I know first hand.
Good luck. God bless.

If your drive is too small, you can't make a bigger mistake. The SSD speeds up booting and unless you're gaming or doing intense photo or video editting, a bigger mechanical drive is fine for email, internet, and everyday usage. You need a functional computer, not a super-fast setup. I would change out the drive so you won't have to watch every little thing you install or add to your computer and worry about running out of space. Good luck!

That is not what people mean when they talk about online Gaming, The things that you are talking about require little more than the Operating system minimum requirements. When some one refers to gaming on a PC they are talking about Hard Core Gamers. These are the people that insist on everything being the most up to date, fastest, best possible hardware you can purchase to run very graphically intensive games. As far as the HDD Vs. SSD on Windows 7 you have been misinformed completely. The operating system doesn't care one way or the other what you install it on, the truth is you can run it off a 32GB Jump Drive. Of course I do not recommend this but it can be done.

You had mentioned previously that you installed the 64Bit Version of Windows 7 if I remember correctly and this may be where another big part of the problem lies. You see the main point of 64bit Operating systems is thought to be the extra security, But in fact the reason it really went main stream when Vista and Mainly Windows 7 Came about is because of the 32bit Memory hole. The 32bit versions of Operating Systems have what is called a Memory Hole, what this means in English is that 32 bit versions of Windows can recognize no more than a total of 4GB of RAM and the PC manufacturers were putting out 64Bit Processors with 8 GB's of RAM.

When you have 4GB of RAM and a Video card with Let's say 1GB of it's own RAM on a 32 bit Version of Windows you aren't able to use all the Physical RAM in the PC because the Video RAM accounts for part of that so you will typically see in the Properties of Windows something along the lines of 3.2GB of RAM rather than 4GB. That being said this was largely addressed in the 64Bit versions of Operating Systems as they Max out at 32GB of RAM instead of 4GB.

Ok All that being said, if you only have 4GB of RAM, take into account that Windows 7 64Bit was really designed for computers that came pre-manufactured with 6 GB or better in mind. I would say your best course of action at this point would be to do a Clean install of Windows 7 onto the system after backing up any important files and choose the x86 installation rather then the x64.

There are many sites out there with step by step screen shots on how to do this, just go to google and type the exact words "Windows 7 Clean Install" it will give you multiple results with step by step on that. From there I would come back and look at things like your PageFile Size. Also make sure that in your BIOS before you do this that the Sata Type is set to ACHI rather than IDE this will make a big difference in performance and speed as well.

PcTechPaul

One problem with SSD's is that they have a 100% failure rate in that SSD's have a limited life. If you look around for apps, there is one that will tell you when you are getting close. Old ones had issues where you would delete a file in Windows but the SSD didn't actually free up the space. I had a issue where one guy in the office had an SSD and he couldn't apply updates from Symantec and it kept giving an error code amounting to SSD disk error. The laptop also ran excruciating slow. I upgraded its firmware and that error went away.

Remember that, especially for the older SSD's, this was NEW technology fairly recently. Before getting one, I'd check on the read/write cycle ratings. That is one reason not to defrag an SSD as it only buys you a small amout of performance in Windows (contiguous clusters) for wearing out the drive (in a manner).

Try going to http://www.seagate.com and look at their SSD primer. The NAND technology that they all use has a limit on write cycles.

a big hard drive is an important addition and you can get them for very reasonable prices, you don't need a ssd for basic work and mechanical drives do fail more often but even so they don't fail regularly so you should be fine, you should also try uninstalling programs you don't need
hope that helps

My big external drive is already plugged into a USB port on the computer. The only problem I have with that is getting messages that the automatic backup failed because some files/folders couldn't be backed up. Hmmm! I just looked at the backup log. Almost every entry says failed or skipped, but the summary only lists a dozen or two files skipped. Guess I have to get with tthe manfacturer when I have some free time in the next few days.


Could my problem with the computer not recognizing the original HDD drive (now an external) be the fact that it gets connected through the USB hub, instead of directly into the computer? I have three onboard ports. The 1TB is connected to one, the hub to the second, and the wireless keyboard/mouse receiver to the third. I didn't put the receiver into the hub simply to make it easier when I take my laptop with me somewhere, but if moving it will allow me to use the old drive I can deal with the receiver being on the hub.


PP

I suspected the USB hub might be part of the problem. I believe the old external drive had been wiped and reformated when I got the computer and I can't even recall if I ever got it to spin up. I may have ported it directly to the laptop, but it's been to long to remember. Now if I can figure out which computer bag I stashed it in.

Being up to my neck in Christmas prep, housekeeping, being a grandpa, and more than I can keep up with, hooking up that drive might have to wait until after the first of the year. Maybe I'll need a break from the chaos of running at break-neck speed, and just pull out that drive. But it won't be tomorrow evening!! Get off from an 8 hour shift volunteering at our local hospital, straight to my daughter's house, and an evening of exquisite dining (aka McDonald's) and watching a Barbie movie and/or playing Wii games with my six year old grandaughter. Life doesn't get any better than that!!

PP

I've been running XP Mode on my HP Pavilian Desktop with four gigs of ram and AMD Athlon II quadcore processor. It's been a terrible idea; every time I open it it's horridly slow. Running XP mode on our friend's laptop would be a terrible mistake.

Vitualization (running an operating system inside an operating system) should be restricted to servers built specifically for virtualization. That's my opinion.

Often, the build up of the number of processes running in the background
can slow or even stop your computer.
First, see how many processes are running when you aren't doing anything. Press cntrl,alt and delete and select task manager. At the bottom left, the number of processes will be indicated. If the number is more than, let's say, 50, you can feel you're on the right tract.
Regardless, close task manager and find and open the run command, type "msconfig" press enter. Now, you can see what occurs when you start your computer. Click the 'services' box from the top menu bar. Click the hide ms services box. Now, disable all the remaining services. Next, click the 'start-up' box from the top menu bar. Turn off anything you don't immediately recognise. Click apply. Restart. All these,changes are reversable using the same method. Things should more along much more quickly. Play and learn.

I had a similar issue with a laptop. The problem was that the SSD was fairly old (64 GB).

1) Go to the the manufacturer's website, support section. Get the LATEST firmware for the SSD and follow the instructions CAREFULLY on how to install the firmware update. In our case, the old 64 GB drive had issues where the disk space was not being turned back over to the OS properly. It shows up as the system says that you have plenty of disk, but, when you try to copy stuff in (especially Windows patches), you get an error saying that there is something wrong with the disk. So, first, I'd upgrade the SSD firmware. Did the pastor tell you the SSD was brand new out of the store or did he pick it up elsewhere? A couple of boots after the firmware is successfully loaded should tell you if this was the problem.

2) "Why did I mention the SSD?" - It's because, depending on version, if the PAGEFILE can't expand when it is needed, it shows up as an out-of-memory issue. (PAGEFILE.SYS needs to expand unless it is FIXED)

So, this brings me to issue number 2: Your Pagefile. Be very careful here:

a) (I'm assuming XP here so, if you have windows 7, your experience may be different.)
b) Right-click on My Computer, left-click on properties.
c) When you get the property display, look for the "Advanced" tab and click on that.
d) Under "Performance", click on settings.
e) Under "Visual Effects" I select "Best Performance" but this is up to you.
f) On the next tab, also called "Advanced", you want to write down the paging file information and then click "Change".
g) Be careful here. Really.
h) I'm assuming you have only one disk here.
i) Note the recommended amount of space for the file. Make the minimum and maximum equal to that size.
j) Click "Set" and then keep clicking "OK" until back at the desktop. You should reboot after this.
k) There is a temptation to use 'system managed' as a setting but, if you HD is getting full (even if it doesn't look full) then there could be an issue with "memory".

Just because the computer is saying "Out of Memory", that doesn't imply that you are out of RAM. It could be your paging file on disk is either too small or just not set correctly. It could also mean that your disk is slow. Many old SSDs are VERY slow because of firmware issues.

Make sure you have absolutely the latest firmware for your SSD and then check on your paging file as well.

To find the make and model of the SSD:

If you can open the laptop, you can easily read all the information off the drive itself. Many laptops have an opening on the bottom or find some help. You can also right-click on My Computer and go to "properties" and select the Hardware tab. Open the device manager and expand the section on Disk Drives. That may help but you may have to look at the details to see if you can guess what the model number is.

I have just decreased that item, where I now have 434 GB free space. Start to Control Panel to System Icon; to System Properties, Advanced System settings to Advanced tab, select Performance. It will have an Advanced tab, bottom is Virtual memory click on change and then Select Custom size. it is listed there as what it is now in MB. I have created mine to read: Initial size: 4000 MB, Maximum size in MB 4400. I am thinking to reduce it further, when I run Defraggler page file sys is 4,096,000 KB. I had 23% defragged and now have 12% defragged. If you change that in there you have to reboot.
Also, if you have CCleaner 3.25 installed, a lot of space was diminished when I ran that. System Restore may have a lot of restore points, back to System, System protection and create a new restore point using day, month and the time plus 0one minute and wait until it changes. That will keep all you previous restore points. Now, Disk Cleanup has on another tab to delete all but that one restore point. I had too many restore points and once had "low on memory". All they did was drop me down to 83% free space - I now have 93% free space.
I haven't tried on item on Virtual memory, you can check no page file sys. Darrell

I'm definitely no computer expert, but my problem is definitely having too large a hard drive. I keep most of my files stored on an external drive, and I still don't have much room left.
Thanks for the reply!
PP

Anything over 10% free space a waste of money? Not a chance. On a traditional hard drive, for example, you have to have 15% free just to defragment. The pagefile/swap file recommend size is 1.5 or 2 times the amount of RAM in the machine (I forget which). If you have a machine with 4 gigs of RAM, a 60 gig hard disk, and 10% free, then that entire 10% will be consumed by the swap file leaving no space at all. When purchasing a hard drive, particularly for a laptop where you can't simply add additional drives, you should pick one that will meet your needs over the life of the drive, not just what you "need" at the moment.