"your computer is low on memory, please close X program"

Anonymous
2010-03-03T09:22:10+00:00

Hi all,

Just need to *disable* that warning above and any actions Windows takes because of it. I am NOT low on RAM as Windows indicates, I am only using 3 out of the 4 GB I have. I refuse to use a page file as I have no need to slow my system down to appease Windows. I truly LOVE Windows 7 Ultimate, and since I switched to the official release last August, has provided me with zero issues. I do not, however, appreciate Windows killing my applications when I hit the archaic 75% RAM utilization mark. I have 4 1GB sticks, if I only wanted 3GB, I only would have put in 3GB... It is most annoying because I rarely ever go above 3.3GB used, and I manage my RAM myself via dual monitor and task manager always open.

Many apologies if I come across as annoyed, but I am. I just crashed my VMware server (which will take a good hour to recover), and lost all unsaved progress 4 hours into a game, because Windows thought it important to start closing programs in the background because I used 3.1GB total of 4GB when I loaded a big map... Not huge in the grand scheme of things, but this happens daily.

System spec:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE @ 3.8GHz

2x ATI Radeon 4970 1GB (Crossfire)

G.Skill 1GB DDR3-2100 @ 2.1GHz (4GB total)

16GB SLC SSD HDD (system drive)

1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (storage drive)

1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 external

Thermaltake 800 Watt Black Widow

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2010-03-04T04:24:14+00:00

Hey,

Page file does not slow down your system.

To enhance performance, it is good practice to put the paging file on a different partition and on a different physical hard disk drive. That way, Windows can handle multiple I/O requests more quickly.

Check with this option:

Change the size of virtual memory**http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory**

Regards,

Divya R – Microsoft Support.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-03-05T04:11:08+00:00

    Hello Mihail Mihaylov,

     As you pointed out, this is an older thread and already answered.  I would suggest reposting this as a new question at the link provided below.  Please include any steps you have attempted along with any additional error messages.

    Microsoft Answers:

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum?tab=all

    How do you assert that this has been already answered when the the 'Answer' picked with the BIG, GREEN, answer sign doesn't even answer or address the actual issue mention in the OP? Is someone getting paid for having their post being chosen as the 'Answered' post or something? Seams someone or a moderator is arbitrarily picking random post (or their own or their friends post) as the answer.

      In reply to SebastianAudet's post on January 11, 2013  

    @KevinLozandier

    I agree, wouldn't hurt for a Windows 7 patch.

    LOL, MS paying their developers to patch something really annoying that would be really helpful to EVERYONE? Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase, If past experience of similar issues is any indication of the chance of this happening ....... who is going to buy that lottery ticket?

    the safe point is dictated not by a dumb percentage 

    Yeh, I know some that have 32GB or RAM. That meant they would be getting an 'Out of Memory' warning when they still have 8GB available. In these days of large amounts of RAM in machines and large amounts per module, the current percentage make absolutely NO sense whatsoever. I mean, these are not the days of only having 512MB in a machine. This always results in 1 out of 4 memory modules or half of 1 out of 2 not getting utilized. Its always a 1/4 of your RAM. What happens when you have 64GB of RAM??? Windows starts giving you 'Out of Memory' warnings when you have 32GB still available??? This is just ridiculous.

    In my case, I only have 4GB, like the original poster. This was an upgrade from 2GB, but I manged to NEVER get these warnings before, its a recent thing. This is a (bad) bug, not a feature.

    On the same Windows 7 machine??? That would mean that the 'out of memory' warning would have less to do with a percentage used or still available and would have more to do with a larger amount of RAM, like 4GB or more. Or maybe its more recent and shows up more on Windows 7. I built my Window 7 machine with 4GB  and started getting them right off the bat. It only happened it seamed while using Google Chrome. Someone tried to tell me in sevenforums that it was the amount of tabs open. Thats is completely false though. I have had  200 tabs open on a previous XP machine with 1GB or RAM and 150-170 browser WINDOWS (before tabbed browsing) on my original XP machine that only had 384MB of SDRAM back between 2002-2005. Neither of which ever had the 'Out of Memory' warnings

    I closed 100 of my 200 Chrome browser tabs and still have the problem. Added 2GB additional RAM for a total of 6GB and still have the problem. 

    What blows my mind is that I have a page file with the typical 1 times RAM. So after adding the additional 2GB for a total of 6GB x 1 = a total of 12GB of virtual memory. There is no reason why if the system is utilizing the page file that I would be running out of 12GB's. I have tried increasing the Page File to 2xRAM and decreasing it to 1.5GB but still get the warning after a while.

    This is complete nonsense and should be a fix somewhere.

     In reply to jayy78 post on January 28, 2013 

    There's nothing to fix! 

    Excuse me???????? The people that have 16GB of RAM should be getting 'Out of Memory' warnings????? Explain this.

    This is user-oriented OS,

    What in the world does that mean??? Every OS has a user.

    so it's abnormal for almost all system memory to be used.

    Who was talking about using all of one system memory

    I have 12GB of virtual memory because I have the page file enabled and there is no way I used even 3/4 or that amount for typical computing.

    I'm running with 3GB, no pagefile and 256MB for video... I'm still alive. And my OS is working properly.

    So that is your solution for an OS that 'IS WORKING PROPERLY', to disable the page file? This isn't the way Windows 7 was originally intended to run and would amount to a broken OS without a fix. No system engineer would tell anyone to disable the page file to fix a problem.

    deactivate it and use some memory monitoring solution (like TweakRAM) to be kept informed about memory usage (instead of a pointless alert). Anyway, most applications, in this case, will crash (Firefox, Chrome) or tell you there's not enough RAM (WinRAR) but it's not the end of the world.

    Jayy78, 

    I don't think you understand the real issue here. Its not about running out of memory or not having enough. Its NOT about the fact that programs will crash and close when you run low on system memory. Its IS about most of us having ungodly amounts of memory (or at least an adequate amount or double to quadruple the MS Min. Sys Req.) and still getting crashes and 'Out of memory' warnings. I have 12GB of virtual memory and should not be getting memory warning on only having open a browser and not many if any other programs. When I had Win XP and ran out of RAM, the browser would start heavily paging some of the open web sites so that to go back to those web page tabs would take a few seconds to reload. And like I said in a previous post, I had the same 150-200 tabs open with much less RAM. So it apears to be a Windows 7 issue since it never happened on XP, or at least appeared to not happen the same way on XP and be so intrusive and annoying.

    I think there is a percentage criteria for the memory warning and that it is tied through the OS to any program requesting memory and any program needing memory is told by the OS, "You better just crash and close because we don't have enough for you" even though there is plenty of RAM and/or page file space available". It is a shame that on a system with 16GB of RAM that you would get these warning and have programs close when you have 4GB left.

    Relative Note: As I start getting these warnings and I keep clicking the cancel button and ignor them ........ and by chance Chrome does not crash and close unexpectedly .......... eventually Windows Explorer starts acting weird and then crashes and proves non functional in which case I need to do a hard reset. By WE acting weird I mean that when I create a folder to save a file it doesn't show up and I have to go up one directory and re-click on the folder dir that I created it in to see it just labeled as 'New Folder'. I then have to click 'rename' and upon renaming, the new name doesn't show and I have to then go up one dir and so on and so forth. Real annoying 

    This is all because it is not a Google Chrome issue as other applications and core modules start to malfunction when Windows starts to INCORRECTLY think it is 'Out of Memory'

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-03-05T04:04:46+00:00

    Hey,

    Page file does not slow down your system.

    To enhance performance, it is good practice to put the paging file on a different partition and on a different physical hard disk drive. That way, Windows can handle multiple I/O requests more quickly.

    Check with this option:

    Change the size of virtual memory**http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory**

    Regards,

    Divya R – Microsoft Support.

    Divya,

    I am astonished at how your answer got picked as the answer when '0' found it helpful.

    I found your response also extremely unhelpful as I have used various versions of Windows. Your accretion that moving the page file to another partition if on the same physical drive being helpful in nonsense. Also, moving the page file off to another physical drive was NEVER necessary, nor would it do anything for the system seeing the RAM as being 'Low' or to solve the OP's original question "Your computer is low on memory, please close X program"

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