First, if you set a minimum and maximum size for the Pagefile (This was
known as the swapfile in Windows 9x) then let the system manage your swap
file. Open Control Panel, go to System, go to the Advanced tab, click
Settings, go to the Advanced tab, under Virtual Memory, click Change, if
Custom size is selected, select "System managed size," click Set and OK.
Virtual memory is essentially all the free space on your hard drive. If
other things are taking up free space, the Pagefile can't grow as necessary.
Hence, open Windows Explorer, select (Highlight) a drive, right click,
select properties and check how much free space you have. If it's less than
1GB that can certainly be a reason why you receive the message.
Items that consume a lot of free space. One, is Hiberfile which usually can
be found on the C drive. If you don't use Hibernation, you can save some
free space by turning it off. Open Control Panel, go to Display, go to the
Screen Saver tab, click the Power button, go to the Hibernate tab, you can
turn off Hibernation by removing the check from "Enable hibernation," click
apply and ok.
Something else which consumes a lot of space is System Restore. I don't
recommend turning it off as this is a useful feature which can restore
system settings if something you install messes things up. The folder which
holds the System Restore File Store is System Volume Information. You might
not see it unless you unhide system files. Open Windows Explorer, go to
Tools, select Folder Options, on the view tab, place a check next to "Show
hidden files and folders" and remove the check from "Hide protected
operating system files," click apply and ok. Checking that folder will give
you some idea of how much space it is taking. If it's consuming too much
space, I'd frankly recommend investing in a larger hard drive. You can
"clean out" that folder by turning off System Restore. This will delete all
restore points, you can then turn it back on and start fresh but much
smaller. Also, there is a disk cleanup feature that will allow you to
delete all but the most recent restore point and this will have much the
same affect as the other method. In Windows Explorer, select the C drive,
right click, select Properties and click Disk Cleanup on the General tab.
after it scans your system, go to the More Options tab and you will find the
System Restore cleanup.
Turning System Restore on or off is done on the System Restore tab of the
System Applet in Control Panel. As I said earlier, I don't recommend
turning it off and running without as it is a useful feature and the first
option we often recommend when there is a problem.
