Limiting Memory for Games and other Apps

I'm running into a bit of difficulty with a few of my games/apps reporting that they have insufficient memory despite the fact that I have 4 gigs of RAM and I've tried closing my background apps and restarting the computer.

I suspect the programs just aren't running well with my 4gigs installed because they do work after I've removed 2 gigs and then they work fine. Is there a way to limit memory allocation to these programs without limiting it for the rest of my system?

Thank you!

You used to be able to right click on the exe file and set compatibility and RAM usage.

You used to be able to set compatibility? I thought so too but couldn't find it.

I currently have Vista SP1 and all automatic updates installed.

There aren't any updates available for the software I am trying to run.

I dunno, it would be really disappointing if the only thing I could do is remove a stick of RAM when I wanted to play a game.


My specs (because I know someone will ask) :

AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core Processor 6000
nvidia 8600GT
4 gigs Corsair XMS

Do you have a Creative Labs sound card installed? I heard of it causing issues with 4GB. Game updates are on their web sites. Which games? What version do you have of the games?

I'm using the onboard sound that came with my M2N32-SLI Deluxe board.

And I'm trying to play a boxed version of Half-Life 2. I'd rather have downloaded it via Steam, but Steam downloads are blocked where I am, so no patches if they are available. Half-Life 2 is documented as having this problem I know, but I've also found other games like my ye olde Worms Armageddon seems to work better with only 2 gigs.