Does anyone know how exactly the virtual memory of win me work ? 'cause i have problem when i start my windows after i login to network, my physical memory drop to 5 MB (I'm using 128 MB). I have a program called "Memdefrag", this program shows the amount of physical memory and defrag it. It seems win me is a memory eater.

virtual memory should best be left alone, but if you want cahge it to 150/300mb.

Setting your own virtual memory is a good idea if you know what you're doing, but the golden rule is ideally set the amount for two and a half times the total of physical memory (ie: 100mb RAM=250Mb swapfile) Other than that, this sounds like a question best answered by JackG...

The 2.5 "golden rule" was sort of valid in the days of 8/16MB PCs. The advice these days is to either let windows manage it, or if you wish to set it yourself, run SYSMON, monitoring swapfile size (not in use) and then set the MIN to the size noted plus 20-odd megs. Never set a MAX. If you set the MIN, then delete the existing swapfile, the new swapfile will be created contiguous (unfragmented). As for Windows leaving little free memory, that is exactly what you want. Free memory is wasted memory. Windows will use as much as possible for the file cache(vcache). If more memory is needed to run apps, the size of this area is reduced. This is a blindly quick operation. Programs like memdefrag (which by the way can NOT defrag memory, that is physically impossible), will force windows to shrink vcache,and then if the settings are overly agressive, will force it to start swapping things to disk. This is exactly what will happen if a "real" program needs memory.

What really happens is the available capacity has to be analysed first before the swapping is done. This slows the system a little. The Freemem / Memdefrag utility writes dummy data continously to speed up the process before the actual swaping takes place.

There is lots of stuff here (list compiled by Renaissance Man) http://itcp.net/~awsh/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_01.htm http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/106791.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/106791.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/105735.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/105439.html http://computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/105735.html http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/20090.html http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/19942.html http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/19090.html http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/13460.html http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/12036.html http://computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/11989.html