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Reason 1: A program accidentally using all available memory The net result is that if your computer finds itself running out of actual RAM because programs are requesting more RAM than actually exists, the system will get slower as Windows reads and writes virtual memory to and from the disk. No matter what type of disk you have – even solid state – actual RAM is always going to be faster.

The problem with virtual memory is that disks are slow. (Again, the disk space is not actually RAM, and is very separate from RAM – it’s just being used in a way that allows Windows to make it appear that there is more RAM.) This whole (very complicated) process is what’s called virtual memory – using space on the hard disk to make it look like there is more available memory than there actually is. When that happens, Windows shuffles things around, moving some of what’s in RAM to disk and reading back from disk some of what used to be in RAM.

Instead, Windows notices when a program tries to use some of that non-existent memory. Obviously, the program doesn’t really have direct access to RAM that doesn’t exist. By that, I mean that a program can request from Windows, say, 4 gigabytes of memory, and Windows could grant that request, even on a system that has less than 4GB available memory, or even less than 4GB of memory total. One of the features of most operating systems today is that they allow programs to request and “use” more RAM than is actually available memory on the system. When we talk about “memory” we’re talking about RAM. It’s a common misunderstanding, so I want to clear it up: memory and disk space are two different things.Ī quick rule-of-thumb: disks contain the information stored on your computer that is preserved when you turn off the power memory, or more correctly RAM, is where programs and data reside when they are in use, but the moment you turn your computer off RAM is erased. A good, but inexact indicator might be the size of the Quicken files themselves. If you’re working with a large database of Quicken data, it’s conceivable that it could use a lot of memory. Programs like Quicken could fall into the same category. Other programs can often also take advantage of additional memory in the same way. Games are a good example – if written properly, a game can keep information in memory for significantly faster access than if it had to read that information from disk. If a good citizen program uses a lot of memory, there’s a reason, and in most cases, the reason is performance. That’s an oversimplified definition of program that’s a good citizen. It also releases memory for use by other programs when it’s no longer needed. Instead, it simply uses only the memory it needs, and no more. Become a Patron of Ask Leo! and go ad-free! Background: how good programs use memoryĪ well-written program doesn’t actually pay attention to available memory.