'Insufficient System Resources'

[Rae_83]

Hello Everyone, This is regarding my older XP machine. It started acting odd yesterday. I can not bring up animated graphics on my screen. It will view most jpeg files but not gif files. I get a 'drawing failed' on the screen. When I call up a folder, only half the items show to the eye. The others are blank. When I call up a program, it says 'Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service'. I took screen shots through my print screen program and no problem to bring that program up. But when I go after them to put in Photobucket to post I get the 'Insufficient' message so I can't post them for you. It lets me do some things but not others?

This is 120 GB with 512 Ram on this machine. C drive is 75 GB with 16 GB free available with the 120 GB balance in a D drive that I don't do anything with. I send any new data to an external drive about once every 2 weeks. It shows 770 cache in virtual memory. I wanted to post this before I try to restart the computer or try a 'system restore'. Have I lost the ol' girl? or can she be saved?

 

[treefrog07]

First make sure you haven't acquired a virus - update and run your anti-virus program.

Then: Start>Run>msconfig
Go the tab for the startup items. Uncheck those you don't need at startup. Save and exit msconfig. Re-start.

You may also want to delete your Temporary files and defrag your HDD. Start>accessories>system tools> delete temp files.
Start>accessories>system tools>defragment (your HDD).

If you need more we can walk you through re-sizing your pagefile.

 

[Rae_83]

Thank you treefrom07. It has come back and I am able to bring up everything I need. I looked again at system information and it shows total RAM is 512 MB with 136.27 MB available. Do you think I need to grow my page file space of 770 cache? Thank you!

 

[treefrog07]

I would set the pagefile to "system managed," but if that is your current setting, you could try manually setting it to 512 MB, or 768 MB, or 1024 MB.

 

[Rae_83]

I toggled it to 'system manage' and it came back at 767. From memory, it seems that I get a 'virtual resources to low' prompt more often. This caused me to raise it to 770. Just trying to get enough RAM each day to keep it from barking at me. I will go with this for a time and raise it as I need too. Thank you!

 

[Rae_83]

Best answer selected by rae_83.

 

[treefrog07]

Your welcome. You may want to consider adding another 512 stick (same speed as the one you have). I did that to my brother's computer this past spring, and he's pleased - it boots a little faster and programs seem to run a little quicker, I think the stick we added to his comuter cost about $25.

 

[Rae_83]

Thank you treefrog07, I have always heard that if you grow your memory, one should take out the existing 512 stick and replace it with a single 1 GB stick, etc....? Would it make a difference in doing it either way? Thank you!

 

[treefrog07]

You are welcome.

If you only have 1 DIMM, then I wouldn't buy any more RAM. (You may want start budgeting for a replacement computer, though.)

I'm guessing your system is at least 4 years old, running 100MHz or 133MHz RAM. I'm also guessing you have 2 or four DIMMs. If I'm guessing correctly, there's really no reason to remove the stick you have as long as your computer can see 1 GB or 2GBs of RAM, just add another stick.