Windows reports "Out of Memory" despite huge pagefile

How to force Windows to use the swap file to the fullest?

I use Windows 7 64-bit and I have 16 GB of RAM + 8 GB (static) pagefile.

When I open many Chrome tabs, and the physical memory is almost full (according to Task Manager which shows only RAM), I start getting "Out of Memory" errors.

When this happens I have to bookmark some of the Chrome tabs to read them later, which is time-consuming and simply annoying.

What needs to be done to increase the size of available memory with the help of pagefile? I know that pagefile is slower, but I don't care.

FelisManulus

Posted 2019-09-11T13:43:00.900

Reputation: 133

Out of memory means (almost) all virtual memory has been consumed. Including the page file. The message is unrelated to physical memory usage. – Daniel B – 2019-09-11T13:53:14.867

@DanielB if my pagefile has been fully consumed, why does wmic pagefile list /format say AllocatedBaseSize=8192 CurrentUsage=2443 PeakUsage=6509 ? – FelisManulus – 2019-09-11T14:02:35.263

I already commented on that below. To view the actually relevant number, in Task Manager, go to “Performance” and check “Commit” in the “System” group. – Daniel B – 2019-09-11T14:09:38.937

Ok ty.. Will increasing pagefile size to 64 GB help or do I need to buy more RAM? @DanielB – FelisManulus – 2019-09-11T14:12:09.700

How many tabs are you talking about having open and how many extensions do you have enabled? I've never seen Chromium browsers exceed 2.5GB of RAM with ~20 extensions and 25+ tabs open. Chrome is a memory hog, and if you're running with only 2GB - 3GB of RAM available, you'll experience issues when running Chrome. There's some other issue at play here, as either there's likely a program(s) that are depleting available RAM, possibly using RAM heavy extensions, too many enabled extensions, or an insanely large amount of open browser tabs. – JW0914 – 2019-09-11T14:37:07.757

I know how to modify pagefile size, but thank you for the answer.

Why does Windows report "Out of Memory" when pagefile is not even 30% full?

C:\Users\User>wmic pagefile list /format

AllocatedBaseSize=8192 CurrentUsage=2443 Description=C:\pagefile.sys InstallDate=20160518033709.309600+180 Name=C:\pagefile.sys PeakUsage=6509 Status= TempPageFile=FALSE – FelisManulus – 2019-09-11T13:53:00.517

1I think if you use Automatic, it should adjust real time and not give you that message. Try that – John – 2019-09-11T13:59:53.140

1Win32_PageFileUsage::CurrentUsage does not indicate commit charge. – Daniel B – 2019-09-11T14:05:59.997

The commit charge has nothing to do with either RAM or pagefile usage. These values are irrelevant to out of memory errors. – LMiller7 – 2019-09-11T18:50:20.523

Windows reports "Out of Memory" despite huge pagefile

Answers