a message appeared on my laptop saying ' low on memory ' close programs, what does this mean?

[998]

I have a windows 7 Toshiba laptop, that I bought in july 2012, its been working ok....at the moment I have many programs open ;

vlc player , yahoo messenger , faststone image viewer, torch browser with 8 tabs open, google chrome , and internet explorer browser .


there all the programs I have open at the moment, a message appeared before saying '' low on memory, close programs to prevent information loss --- torch ''

it alarmed me the message, and I just wondered what it meant?

[Mickayla]

You need to clear your RAM.

[Nick]

memory as in ram, not storage, when you have low memory things tend to crash, it can't keep up. this is why a lot of computers tend to have 8gb of ram, it's quite plenty to run a lot of programs at once. too many programs, too many things to handle, it may crash some programs just to keep up, that's why it tells you to close them yourself to prevent loss of data which may occur if it decides to close it on it's own.

there's no need to be alarmed, it happens sometimes, you may just have not a lot of ram, you can upgrade that easily if this is a problem to you, it's even easy on laptops, and relatively cheap, although prices have gone up.

[MIKE L]

with all those progs open you need more RAM (memory)

[Jennifer]

It means the RAM (Random Access Memory) normally measured in GB (Gigabytes) is running out. You can possibly install more RAM in your laptop or just close down some programs you dont use. You can also use msconfig to stop the programs you dont need from autoloading on start up, this would free up some of the RAM.

[Felix]

When it says memory it means RAM. If you want to clear you ram you can restart your computer.

[Fred]

Everybody agrees that you are running out of RAM. Now, how to fix it. Simply adding more RAM is not the only answer.

Run CCleaner. In CCleaner, Tools, Startup, see what is running every time that you boot your computer. Adobe Acrobat and your HP printer don't need to be running all the time. Many other programs, including many you are unfamiliar with, will be in this list. Many like mouse, video, and anti-virus need to be running.

Google the names of programs that you are unfamiliar with to see if they can be disabled which just stops them from running when you boot the computer. Disabling does not uninstall them. All of this will free up RAM.

You do not list the amount of RAM you have or the OS. Adding RAM may help.

You should also check how much free space you have on your HD. At least 10% of this space should be unused. In your browser, uninstall add-ons and search engines that you do not use.