How Do Windows Virtual Memory Features Work

By Technology Last updated Monday, June/03/2024

Memory and Running Programs

Every time you run a program, it uses space in your RAM by blocking off a portion of it for use. If you have, for example, a 3GB RAM and you run a memory-intensive photo-editing application, it may block off 1GB for its use. This leaves you with 2GB of RAM. Some of the 2GB memory is reserved for your operating system to run. The part of the RAM that's reserved for operating systems is called the kernel memory, which may consume more than 1.5GB of RAM. What's left from your 3GB RAM will be allotted and divided for other applications to use.

When your RAM runs low because you have several applications open, your computer will run slow. Some applications will take a long time opening, while others may appear to have hanged or stalled. This is because running simultaneous applications randomly access what is available in the RAM, thereby depleting its resources. The more applications you have running, the more they consume memory space.

RAM always needs to have a few spaces available because this is the first resource that applications access by default in order to run. Virtual memory works by taking some load off from RAM by placing some of the processes in the hard drive. These applications or processes may have been idle for some time so they are transferred temporarily in the hard drive to free up some space in the RAM.

The transfer of memory space from RAM to hard drive is done through the paging file system. The pagefile.sys found in your root drive stores the processes that have been paged out of the RAM and moved into the hard drive. This is the virtual memory used by your computer, and it can be configured in the Advanced tab of your System Properties under the Performance option.

Virtual memory works as a temporary solution for performance issues you have in your computer. Freeing up your RAM makes your system works faster. This is not a permanent solution if you're always running low on RAM. Computers access RAM easier and faster than it can access your pagefile.sys. 2GB or more of RAM is advisable for running the most current operating systems.