Help with virtual memory for newbie please

[floody]

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum but after a few searches most of the threads seemed to be in here.

Anyway on with my problem, I'm trying to do some video editing & I'm having mega problems when trying to capture the dv video via firewire (computer hangs, picture is fuzzy, sound is distorted etc), Ive searched & posted on the video editing forums & tried all the help but to no avail, my friend mentioned something about virtual memory & when doing searches it does seem that this need addressing when doing video editing. My system comprises of :

2 * 512mb DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin Extra Value
1 x AMD Athlon XP3200+ 400mhz FSB 512 L2 Cache Barton CPU - OEM
1 x PcChips M848ALU SKT A SIS 748 400 DDR AGPx8 ATA133 6CH
Sound/lAN/USB 2.0 will Take Upto a 3.2+ AMD Athlon XP And Sempron CPU's Retail Box
1 x Geoforce XFX 5200 graphics card
1 X Firewire card
2 hard drives of which 1 is 20g & the other 60g which is partioned so that I have a 20g & 40g.

I have not touched any settings for virtual memory so it's still set up (I think) as min 2m & max 1024m.

Can anyone suggest what I need to do to get my system set up so that I can start capturing video properly???

 

[pip22]

If VM was set to too low a value, Windows XP would give you a message to that effect. And anyway, an upper limit of 1024MB should be ample. However, you could easily increase it if you are convinced that's the problem.
1. Control Panel (change view to 'classic')
2. Click 'System'
3. Click 'Advanced' tab.
4. Click the top 'settings' button.
5. Click 'Advanced'
6. Click 'Change' at the bottom.
7. Click the radio button to enable 'System Managed Size' (instead of 'Custom')
8. Click the 'Set' button and Windows will now be able to use as much VM as it needs up to the maximum free space that's available on that disk.
9. Click 'OK' and Windows may ask you to re-start (can't remember).
If you still get same problem it can't be a VM issue, unless the disk containing PAGEFILE.SYS (the virtual memory file) is almost full.

 

[floody]

Pipp,
thanks for that can you tell me what the settings should be for each physical hard drive.
I have 2 & 1 is partioned. Drive 1 is partioned into C & H. Do i need to set up the virtual memory for both or just 1 & how do I split it between the 2 hard drives??

thanks

 

[benz925]

Vm

I'm pretty sure you only need one hd/partition used for virtual memory, but as pip says you need to choose a partition that you dont fill up. I wonder if defragmenting might help?

 

[pip22]

You don't need to set up VM on all hard drives. Just set it up on one drive. Most people have it on the same drive as Windows (C, but if there is more free space available on a different drive you can set it up on that one instead - try to put it on the fastest drive in the system if there's enough free space on it.