How to Manage Physical Memory & Virtual Memory

By Technology Last updated Friday, April/26/2024

Monitoring RAM

1). Turn your computer on and wait for Windows to fully load. Right-click the taskbar and select "Task Manager."
2). Click the "Performance" tab to bring up info on your RAM and virtual memory. The second group of boxes, under the CPU info, details your computer's memory usage history. The box under that, labeled "Physical Memory (MB)," features four boxes. Box 1 covers your computer's total RAM, the "Cached" box describes how much you've been recently using, the "Available" box details the physical memory not in use and the "Free" indicates how much memory your cache is using on useless information.
3). Compare the first three statistics and determine whether you're comfortable with how much RAM you have compared to how much you're currently using and how much is available.

1). Turn your computer off completely and disconnect all cables and plugs connected to it. If it's a laptop, disconnect the battery. Consult your computer's manual about how to perform a RAM upgrade. While the process is fairly universal, there are often small steps that differ, like how to remove the case panel to access the RAM.
2). Open your computer case as described in the manual. For desktops, you'll likely remove one of the tower's side panels, while laptops usually require you to remove a memory bay hatch on the bottom of the computer.
3). Remove the old memory by opening the locking latches holding the modules in place. Insert the new modules in the exact same fashion.
4). Replace the clips to lock the RAM into place. Return the side panel to your tower or the memory module bay to your laptop and follow any further instructions specified by the manual to complete the RAM upgrade.

1). Click "Start" and type "Perfmon.msc" into the search bar before pressing "Enter." Click "Performance Monitor" in the left pane of the window.
2). Click the plus sign to add a counter. Scroll through the "Available Counters" list and select "Page File."
3). Click "Add" and "OK." Look at the legend in the lower part of the window to see what line color is associated with the paging file. The "Usage" line shows the percentage of your virtual memory your computer is using, and the "Usage Peak" line describes how much you use when your PC needs it most. If the lines are relatively close to the top, consider increasing the size of the page file.

1). Click "Start" and right-click "Computer." Click "Properties" and, in the "System" window, click the "Advanced System Settings" option near the top-left side of the window.
2). Click the "Advanced" tab and click "Settings" under the "Performance" heading. Click the "Advanced" tab and select "Change" under "Virtual Memory."
3). Uncheck the box to "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" to make the other options on this page available. Click the "Custom Size" option and put the smallest size you want your page file to be in the "Initial Size" box. Put the largest you want your page file to be in the "Maximum Size" box. Both should be in megabytes, so a 4 GB initial size would be around 4,000 MB. The page file will fluctuate between these two sizes as needed.
4). Press "Set," then press "OK" in the three following windows to exit the settings. Restart your computer if you are prompted to do so.