Suddenly low on memory???

[axlrose]

Okay, so i have 4gb of ddr3 ram and a velociraptor hard drive and have had no problems before today. lanned all weekend playing europa universalis 3 and some left 4 dead 2. today i go to play my computer and while watching a starcraft 2 clip on gamespot and running a virus scan in the background, i get a windows pop up that tells me i am low on memory? never had this problem before and question it's validity. I was using the net at the lan party while hosting the game and had no problems. today they suddenly pop up. thoughts?

thanks.

 

[linuxhero27]

Several things could be going on.

1) Your virtual memory is too low.
2) You have too many things draining too many resources (I don't care how fast and how much everything is in your system. You CAN run out of resources).
3) You're infected.
4) Your HDD is fragmented to high hell and its affecting the whole OS.

 

[axlrose]

okay. i am running VIPRE and so i'm hoping i'm not infected with anything.

also running tuneup utilities which tells me there is no reason to defrag my hard drive (was there at a lan party on my old build) as there is 102gb free.

wondering how to work with what is draining my resources as the list of icons on the bottom right of my desktop is getting long. I closed about five icons there but still have about five icons there. how do i get some of those to quite popping up there and running without being asked? (closed something for quicktime and for impulse for example, two programs i rarely use, but which seem to come on and run at start up)

sounds like there is a way to just make your virtual memory larger, but that seems like a band aid. I want to figure out what the actual problem is instead of just adding more virtual memory to what is allocated.

Thanks for the ideas and any help. I THINK i can narrow 4 off for sure and 3 off i'm pretty sure.