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CNET Community help and how-to weekly newsletter
June 22, 2007
Dear CNET members,
Happy Friday! For those of you who are new to this newsletter, I welcome you! I know as a new subscriber, this whole newsletter maybe a bit abrupt and confusing since you are suddenly in a middle of a conversation of who knows what, so to get caught up, check out the community newsletter archives, where you'll see that each week's Q&A comes from the last Friday's newsletter. So check them out and join the rest of CNET's community members in helping each other out and voicing your opinions--it's all good fun, and I hope you stick around.

This week's topic is all about that little message that pops up saying Windows Virtual Memory is too low! And today we are here to demystify what it is and see what are some ways you can help make this issue go away. While Denise's question below specifically mentions her laptop, virtual memory works the same with desktops. As you read through the answers from our members, you'll realize that low virtual memory can be caused by many factors, which can range from too many tasks running on your desktop to insufficient hard drive space. Many of the answers and solutions provided by our members came in all sizes, but generally speaking, most of our members said pretty much the same thing. So to get you started, here are a few I selected for a good read. Everyone who participated deserves a pat on a back, because there's so much great advice--even learned from personal experiences. I'm sure by the time you've gone through the answers, you'll be a pro at explaining to others what exactly virtual memory is all about and what are some ways to fix it when it is low. Thank you all for your contributions. Have a great weekend and a beautiful summer season!

Cheers!
Lee Koo
Manager, CNET community


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Member Question of the Week
Q Help! I have been using a laptop for a year and a half now and love it. I have Windows XP as my operating system, and lately I keep getting this little warning saying that my 'Windows Virtual Memory is too low.' Can anyone tell me what that means and what I can do about that? I have never encountered that before, and everyone I talk to who is the least bit computer-savvy doesn't know what it means, either, nor has it happened to them. I appreciate any advice or help you can offer. You've helped before, so I turn to you again. Thanks!
Submitted by: Denise D.
Vote for the most helpful answer
Vote Below are the answers we've selected for you to vote on. Click on the title to read the answer by the member. Here are the selected submissions grouped in one post.

Time to vote! Now that you've read our members' answers, which would you consider the most helpful? Click on the button to weigh in on the decision.
 Answer by El Alquimista
 Answer by Wolfie2k5
 Answer by zepper
 Answer by fruehaw
 Answer by kpfuser
 Answer by jcbowen
For the member whose answer was voted the
most helpful by our community, we will send
this member some cool CNET branded gear.

Most helpfulPrevious week's Q&A
The votes are in! Below is the answer voted most helpful by our community to last week's question.
Q So there have been a lot of questions and discussions about making computers boot faster and run faster, and I've done a bunch of stuff to help. Still, when I first turn on the system, I have 49 processes running in my task manager, using more than 300MB "Commit charge" (memory? I haven't added all the numbers listed as Memory Usage to see if it matches). They have names like shstat.exe, UdaterUI.exe, wmiprvse.exe, issch.exe. How do I know what these are, and if any are unimportant and can be stopped? Also, some seem to be listed multiple times, like svchost.exe (seven times--once for local service, twice for network service, and four times for system). Is all this really necessary? Explanation of exactly what is needed or not during startup will be very helpful!
--Submitted by: Larry N.

Q Larry, it's fairly simple to figure out exactly what those mystery processes are. There are sites dedicated to explaining exactly what those mystery executables are doing. Google (and other search engines, for that matter) are your friend. Simply type the name of the process and search it out. As a for instance, Google returns about 105,000 hits for SHSTAT.EXE and the first hit for a site called liutilities.com says the file is part of McAfee's antivirus suite and should NOT be messed with... (read more)
--Submitted by: Wolfie2k5
    Congratulations to the winner!
Check out next week's question:
Q Recently I've decided to rearrange my living room to get a better use of my floor space. With this shuffle, I would like to mount my 42-inch plasma TV on the wall; it is currently sitting on a stand. I would like to take on this project myself, as I know it must cost quite a bit to have someone install it for me. My main concern is the possibility of the plasma falling off the wall with the incorrect installation. So is this task difficult to do? I need as much advice to get this job done right. Can you help me out and list some of dos and don'ts when mounting my plasma to the wall? What types of mounts are most secure? Any expert or self-installation experiences that you can share will help. Thanks.
--Submitted by: Tom C.

We feature a new question every Friday, and if you have the answer for our member, you can submit it above. If your submission is picked by our members as the most helpful answer, you'll receive some cool CNET branded gear.
Check out our previous Community newsletters here.
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