Can anyone explain what is virtual memory? [duplicate]

Virtual memory is a technique implemented in both software and hardware that treats memory as a virtualized resource. Applications manipulate memory using virtual addresses that can be mapped into physical memory as needed. Among other things, this permits an operating system to make much more memory available to applications than the amount of physical memory the system has.

There are two basic reasons virtual memory can be exhausted. One is a shortage of physical memory. The other is a misconfigured virtual memory system. On Windows machines, you can just let Windows manage your virtual memory configuration. If you are still running low on memory, that almost always indicates insufficient physical memory, and the solution is to add RAM.

As pointed out, Virtual Memory is the ability of the OS (with support from the CPU) to provide applications with more memory than exists on the system. A secondary storage system (like a hard drive/SSD) with a much larger capacity is used to support memory allocation requests when needed.

You can fix your issue of the "virtual memory is full" by:

1. Increase the size of the virtual memory paging file
2. Check if a program uses a lot of memory (maybe it has memory leaks and needs an upgrade/update)
   • Open Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar and then clicking Task Manager.
   • Click the Processes tab.
   • To sort programs by memory usage, click Memory (Private Working Set).
3. Upgrading RAM on your system.

Reference:
Microsoft Windows support site - Preventing low memory problems