How much Virtual Memory

How much virtual memory is optimal for your machine?  It should be 1.5 times to the RAM you have installed in your system.

What is virtual memory?  Virtual memory is the space on hard drive which was used by operating system as RAM when there is not enough space left on real RAM.  When physical memory (RAM) is filled up with the opened programs, and if you opens any new program, then old programs in memory will be shifted to the physical space on the hard drive.  Whenever those programs needed to be executed, those programs will be again shifted into RAM again, if there is not enough space left in RAM, some programs will be shifted to the hard drive.  As that hard disk space is being used as memory and it is not physical RAM, it is called virtual memory.

So, how to change virtual memory setting on windows XP? Go to system properties(right click on My Computer and select properties), select Advanced tab, click on settings button in Performance section.  Select Advanced tab, click on change button in Virtual Memory section.  Set Initial size, and Maximum size here for the selected drive.  Setting both to the same value improves performance.  Actually setting virtual memory is enough, you may choose to set it on another drive also.