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I'm running Windows 7 64bit, originally installed on my Samsung Slate 7 (it has 4 GB RAM). Swap is disabled.

Recently Windows has started to show me a low memory warning on about 3GB of RAM usage. I've disabled that warning, using an advice from the Internet. Now programs are failing with typical out of RAM symptoms at 3.2 GB.

Why won't Windows use the last gigabyte of RAM? According Task Manager there's a cache in that gig, but shouldn't Windows replace the cache with apps when demanded?

Note: when swap is enabled, the system freezes very frequently and this is another problem.

Hennes
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Pavel Koryagin
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2 Answers2

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The "missing" RAM is probably allocated to your video card (and possibly other hardware - though usually the video card is what sucks a big chunk of ram).

In fact here it says http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/tablet-pcs/XE700T1A-A03US-specs:

Graphics

Graphic Chip Intel® HD Graphics 3000

Maximum Graphics Memory Shared

My recommendation is to enable swap and insert a SD card (16GB or 32GB) and tell Windows to use readyboost on the SD card. This doesn't magically give you more RAM, but I believe it should help with the freezing.

A reinstall with a store copy may help with your memory situation - I know they like to have a lot of bloat.

Also if the internet (or someone) is telling you to ignore warnings or errors - it's probably the wrong thing to do.

Natalie Adams
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The "low memory warning" has nothing directly to do with the amount of RAM that's in use. It has to do with running out of commit limit, which is the maximum possible amount of private pageable address space. The commit limit on a Windows system is size of usable RAM + your pagefile size. If you've disabled the pagefile, as apparently you have, then it's just the size of usable RAM. It doesn't matter how much of the RAM is "in use"; the commit limit (you'll see this on the Task Manager screen) stays the same. If a program's request for private virtual memory, added to the current commit charge (this also is on the TM screen), totals to more than the commit limit, the request for virtual memory will fail, and you get the error popup.

The cure is to enable your pagefile again... or add more RAM, if you can.

n.b.: Windows systems do not "freeze very frequently". I've never disabled my pagefile (except for test and demo purposes) on any Windows NT-family system, going back to the pre-release beta of NT 3.1, and the only times I've ever seen them "freeze very frequently" were due to completely different problems. Re-enable your pagefile and then fix the other problems.

Jamie Hanrahan
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