I've got a year-old Acer T-135 Aspire desktop, 512 Meg of Ram, 80 G hard drive, plenty of space on the drive. Just recently something starts running after I've powered up and essentially freezes everything else, (I can't access programs, send/receive e-mail, etc.). I'm using Avast for anti-virus and those scans show no problems, likewise with MS Anti-Spyware. I've just defragged and do run a disc cleanup every three weeks. I've cleaned up the system tray and don't have a lot coming on line at startup. Today I started getting a message window that says "Windows-Virtual Memory Minimum too low." Any idea what's going on and how to fix it? Thanks.

The first idea that crosses my mind' is hitting ctrl+alt+del all at the same time. And then go to processes, becoming familiar with this list of programs is fairly important in my mind to troubleshooting this sort of simple problem if you belive there is a program running in the background that shouldn't be, you will know by looking through this list. After that, what I belive that refers to is the page file. If you go to your desktop, right click 'my computer' and hit properties a window should pop open, from there go to the 'advanced' tab, all the way to the right and then hit settings under the performance portion. Go to advanced on the new window and at the bottom it should say virtual memory, click the 'change' button. Assuming that so far all of the ideas are fitting together correctly, make sure that 'System managed size' is the option selected. You could Custom size and select 768 - 768 (don't forget to click set and then ok). Also keep in mind that all programs use virtual memory in itself, the problem is not likely related to a virus (but it could be for all I know), but your anti-virus likely uses a fair amount of resources (one of the many reasons why I do not belive in anti-virus programs). "How can I fix "too little virtual memory" in Windows?" from the Ask Dave Taylor! Tech Support Blog
Also try reading this page, if after these little guides you cannot figure out a solution, you may wish to format your hard drive (I do it every 6 months). If it is indeed related to a virus, or any other silly problems, formating will likely solve your issue as long as it is software related. Good luck!

I also forgot to mention, if you go to your start button, click run and type 'msconfig' system configuration will pop open. The farthest to the right tab called 'startup' is the tab you want to go to, you may want to look through that list (use a bit of caution as you can mess more then a few things up through msconfig, I recommend only going through startup) and be sure that anything in that list is something you approve of.

Brad: i merged your posts together as you posted near the same time. Next time please just press edit.

Welcome to the PC Help Forum Fenn.


Thanks for that info Brad.

Thanks Brad. Hitting control-alt-delete doesn't work when whatever's running is doing its thing since the machine is basically locked up. I have however gone in and changed virtual memory to 768. I'll keep you posted on what happens, and thanks again.

Hi Fenn, with the Virtual Memory...

The minimum amount should never exceed the total amount of RAM you have in your computer.