Virtual Memory
 

When I run my web designer programs and I'm working in there with over 1000 images at a crack, I get major slow downs. It normally takes me 2 seconds to open and load a small nearly imageless site, but with one of my image-heavy sites, it takes nearly 5 minutes. I'm 100% sure it has nothing to do with viruses or something like that, it's just my laptop wasn't made to take on all this heavy lifting. I've heard that freeing up more virtual memory would help me out in this particular situation.

How do I do this?

How much should I free up...is there a "safe" number?

Thank you.

How much physical ram do you have?

To set your virtual memory, go to the "System" option in the control panel, or just right click "My Computer" and click "Properties".

Once your there, go to:

Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced.

You should see the setting for virtual memory there. A good rule i always use is to set it to 1.5x the amount of actual ram that you have.

Why on earth are you working with over 1000 images at a time? You can try increasing the amount of virtual memory but it's going to be slow on a laptop. Half of the reason it's taking so long to load is that the hard drive is slow, so increasing the amount of virtual memory on the same slow hard drive probably won't do you any good.

There's no way you need 1000 images open at once even for a complex website; so do yourself and your laptop a favour and just open the ones you need.

I have 512 mb, I believe. Thanks, I'll try that right away.

I'm not directly opening 1000 images at a time, but the overall site has well over 1000 images, so I think the program I'm using is lagging because it wants to have all the files ready for me should I request them. I'm not using a mass market program like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, so it could be lagging because it's not well made. Technically speaking, my prog is probably not designed to be used the way I'm using it, but I'm forcing it now, it seems.

Your computer usually allocates the virtual ram automatically, but like said by Apollo it is 1.5x physical ram, my advice is to grab some more ram, 1gb is usually good when dealing with what you are talking about.

512mb of ram is definatley not enough for what you're doing.

Upgrade to atleast one gig of ram (if not two).

Do laptops use special memory seperate from desktops?

Is it easy to install laptop memory?

Yes. The ram sticks for laptops are called SO-DIMMS and are smaller than desktop sticks.

Do you know what type of ram you laptop takes? (DDR or DDR2?)

Should be. Most laptops either have it under the keyboard, or behind a cover on the bottom. Once you find where its at on your laptop, it pops in and out pretty much the same way as desktop ram.

It may take some searching but most laptop manufacturers provide instructions on how to replace the RAM on their laptops. It's considered a user-serviceable part on most, if not all, laptops so it won't void the warranty or anything like that.

Isn't it a mission to obtain laptop memory / upgrades?

Its pretty easy, newegg has a entire section for laptop memory (as do alot of sites):

Newegg.com - Laptop Memory

Beast, I must be confused, with something.. is it right that on most laptops you can't change graphics cards?

Yea, most of the time the only things you can change are the Ram, Harddrive, Optical Drives, and battery

1.5 times your RAM is just the Windows default, better to go 2-3 times if you have the space. Even better yet is making a dedicated partition for swap file space.

...and CPU.

That seems like a excessive amount. I mean if your so low on memory that you need to set it that high, its time for a upgrade. As long as you have at least 1GB, having 1.5x VM should be more than enough. I can't see having such a large amount of VM helping that much either since its so much slower that actual ram.

How would I find out what kind of memory I'm using? Thanks for the link, BTW.

Download CPU-Z and go to the "Memory" tab and tell us what it says under "Type" and "Frequency".

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/1...board01ku3.jpg

Ok now I know what kind to get...thanks a bunch.

Do laptop mobos have the same amount of slots for memory as PCs do? I'm thinking 4 slots.

Does this match my CPU-Z specs?

That much swap file space is far from overkill and quite common. In fact if you leave it at the default amount Winows will lag and add a measley 2MB at a time when needed even if you do have 1 GB RAM. Forums like VU's FEAR are full of tech talk about people commonly using a 4GB dedicated swap file partition.

No. Most have 2. You do know that you need the smaller SO-DIMM memory, rather than normal memory, right?

:eek: 4GB just for VM? What a waste of space.

I can tell you from experience with my computers that setting a really high VM space makes very little difference if you have a good amount of ram.

It can help on older systems with under 512MB memory, but if you have at least 1GB, your just losing disk space with that much IMO.