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This problem is really annoying me and I have no clue why it occurs.
I have an Asus n56vv laptop with 8GB of RAM running Windows 8.1 x64, and here's the problem: often when I run certain games or applications I receive the following warning popup:
Close programs to prevent information loss Your computer is running low on memory, save your files and close these programs:"
Followed by the program I was currently running.
Now, this would be perfectly acceptable if I really was running out of memory, but this is NEVER the case. Every time this happens I check the task manager and about half of the memory is unused (~4GB). Also, this tends to happen even on old/tiny programs that definitely don't require a large amount of memory. For example: it regularly happens with Worms Armageddon, a game from 1999 which requires 32MB of RAM.
So clearly it's not really a "low memory" problem, something else is going on here, in fact if further proof is needed, let me testify that I always dismiss the warning and continue using the application and I never ran out of memory ever.
Everywhere I search online it is stated that this is caused by too little memory being assigned to the Page File, but I tried changing it and it doesn't seem to make a difference, in fact every time I check the PageFile used is always the minimum, since theres enough real RAM in the system that nothing ever needs to use the PageFile.
Master_T
Posted 2014-02-19T18:29:00.120
Reputation: 271
As has been said in a great many simiilar questions, the message you're seeing has nothing to do with a shortage of RAM. It's about a shortage of available space for "committed" virtual memory. You make more room for committed virtual memory by increasing your pagefile size or adding RAM. – Jamie Hanrahan – 2016-05-14T20:27:20.130
The program may leak memory. No need to be so touchy. :) Have you monitored memory usage while the error occurred? – Daniel B – 2014-02-19T18:38:16.417
1This happens with lots of different programs, mostly games. I always check, they aren't using much memory. It just happened to me while running the MAME emulator, it was using something like 250mb of RAM. – Master_T – 2014-02-19T18:47:15.420
If this happens a great with MAME then it sounds like a problem with MAME itself – Ramhound – 2014-02-19T18:58:03.653
Don't just check a program's memory usage. Also check the overall usage. I once used a trainer (yeah yeah) which was somehow steadily generating page faults without apparent growth in memory usage. Yet, the memory was indeed completely filled. – Daniel B – 2014-02-19T19:01:57.850
1@Ramhound: as I stated in both my question and comment, it happens with lots of programs
Daniel: as I said in the question, I always check the overall memory usage as well, I have plenty left. I'm trying increasing the PageFile more and more at the moment, I reached 9gb and for the first time I haven't yet seen a warning. I'll let you all know if it lasts. – Master_T – 2014-02-19T20:17:39.410