Vista - Out of memory??

Hi all, I am fairly new to the forums, and VERY new to Vista x64.
The machine is new, and I was trying out some apps and games, I was in Secondlife when I got an error messege saying I was out of memory and needed to free up memory. I shut down the app and restarted it. Runs but I watched Task manager and saw my free memory down to almost nothing after an hour or so. The cached seems very high. I did alittle research and decided to set a second page file on my 1TB hard drive, ( OS is on the other HHD's )( regulated by system for size ) I'm not really sure whats going on, I'd appreciate any help, and I will post screen shots of any and all needed info. Thanks in advanced.

Example of just task manager and this page openis attached.
Again, any help would be great in getting the memory set up on here optimal.

My system:
Vista Home premium x64
8GB RAM
Nvidia 9800GT 1GB Mem
2 500 GB HDD ( in raid 0, shown in my computer as a single drive?)
1 1TB HDD

Was this a web pop up that told you this or a system message? I asked this because you might being spoofed by some sort of web ad.

If it was a system message, possible casues could be virus/malware, a drive space issue or a bad stick of ram.

-Scan for viruses or malware. Here is a decent free web based scanner..

Free Virus Scan - Kaspersky Lab

-run scandisk on your hard drive, also check the free space. Brink developed a tutorial which can be found here...

Check Disk - chkdsk

-run memory diagnostics test. Procedure can be found here ....

Memory Diagnostics Tool

OK, I'm running Kaspersky AV, nothing found, and no it wasnt a pop up, it was an error messege telling me I was out of memory and needed to free up memory then given three choices of retry, abort, or cancel. The second time it happened, I had task manager running, and sure enough, I was down to 4 MB of free physical memory. I did alittle research, was told a second page file on another drive other then my OS drive wouldnt hurt so I set my third hard drive up to page as well as my primary drive ( C drive which is actually 2 500 gb HDD in RAID 0 ) But I then saw in task manager that I had virtual memory set to system settings, which had 16MB as my minimum, recommended was 12285MB, with 16980 MB allocated for all drives. HP Tech suggested going to custom and raising the initial to the recommended 12285 MB, and the maximum to the 16980 MB. I did this for both hard drives set up to page. So far I have more physical free memory, but have noticed that when I raised the maximum amount to 16980 MB, the allocated now reads 24570 MB. Sorry if this is very "noob" but with an 8gig machine and 1 gig on the card, a quad core processor, i was hoping graphics wouldnt be an issue. I mostly run Modeling and animation programs, ( Maya, photoshop, Blitz, POVRAY...etc ) I know the 9800GT with 1 GB ram isnt the greatest but the 4870 2X hasnt gotten here yet and I dont want memory issues causing problems. I need to run intesive games to test so any help in tweaking the memory use on this machine would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again in advance. Below new attached snips after resizing page size.

Have you tried automatically manage page files for all drives? Modelling and animation demand fair amount of memory. 40g's of memory seems like alot to be going through though. Have you verified all your drivers and programs are up to date?

This getting into the guessing stage. Windows Vista Home Premium x64 only supports 16 gigs of ram. If you are really going through that much memory, you may have hit some version imposed limit on total memory. You sound like you may have some workstation class applications running on a gaming computer...

The machine was set up for upgrading, it has started out as an OK gamer, if upgraded card and PSU are installed, a better gamer, but yes, I do have several workstation cards available, but I tend to try to stay with the gaming cards so I can run the high enders and test things on these cards. The apps are running ok, I was just freaked by the out of memory messege, ( remember, this happened running an online game that doesnt run very well on its own, and uses a ton of memory because of constant drawing and rendering..it was why I tried it first on this set up.. to see if it could be managed..) and really wanted to know if there were tweaks available to keep more free physical memory available so that as the games run harder the memory wont bottom out. I realize that cached memory is a good thing.. but with all the memory on this thing and a card with 1GB on it, an out of memory messege shouldnt be a concern..LOL. I re ran the game trying to bottom it out and right now, my task manager got to slightly less then 2600MB free at one point with around 3600MB cached, I dont think it got any lower then 2100MB free..so its better I think right now.. But I am still in the dark on the settings for virtual memory...so...
If anyone can guide me alittle better, it would be really appreciated...
I have three HHD's
2 500GB HD's in RAID 0 ( showing as 1 HD in my computer ) This contains my OS and original Page file..set to custom intitial size: 12285MB Maximum size set to 16980MB
My third drive ( 1TB ) has a page file set up with the same settings. It was suggested in a few other forums that a second page file on a seperate drive from my OS could help out???? Not sure on this one. HP Techs said that virtual memory was supposed to be set a certain multiple of your actual installed ram. Anyone know the real deal? Thanks in advance!!!

By the way.. if this post should be in another section.. I truly apologize. I didnt think this was strictly a "gaming" issue but more of a Vista memory question..but I will understand and beg forgiveness!!

being out of memory on THAT machine simply cannot be due to the machine (hardware).
There's a few options. There are those already discussed (virus, etc). If you've scanned for that, if can't be that.

If I read correctly, this problem only occurs with one program? It was second life, right?
My husband used to play that quite often, and kept getting the same messages until he installed the latest graphics card drivers and after that uninstalled the application and reinstalled it (second life, that is). Second life used to have some memory allocation issues, so you might want to check that out. If you only have this issue with this one application, it might be a better idea to look for a forum where they discuss problems with that application specifically, as they will know more about the problem.

Again, with 8 GB, memory can't be an issue, and increasing your page file shouldn't be needed. So if you only have it with this one application, then you need to seek help on another forum. Remember also that you have a relatively new graphics card, so the application might have some problems with it.... try a new driver.

So in short..... please tell us whether you've gotten this message in other programs as well..... cos if you have we need to be looking towards other solutions.

I "Googled" Second life memory issue and found alot of hits around the subject. The just of it, the game seems to be plagued with memory holes. One guy talked about everytime he teleported his page file usage would increase. Others hypothized it was memory used for textures. It doesnt seem to use up all the available RAM, it just grows the page file. There was even a pick of your dreaded "out of memory" error. Almost all the conversation is at:

jira.secondlife.com

I am not sure if it affecting just some hardware configurations or if everyone is experiancing it. Long and short, I don't think adjusting your page file configuration will do a thing for it. I think the developers will need to patch the game to fix your issue. They may have already come up with a solution. The problem was decribed over several threads. Some of those are 4 months old.

Thanks for the replies!!! I dont play secondlife anymore, but know its a very hard app to run on alot of machines, since getting this thing and upgrading alot of things, ( PSU, RAM, adding another HDD, another optical drive..) I have been trying some hard hitting apps to test its stamina.. ( Quake 4, Vegas 6, Secondlife, Maya, POVRAY, Adobe premeire..etc ) and so far, Secondlife was the only thing that gave me trouble, and yes I too have been researching the issues with SL, but being new to Vista AND a 64 bit system, I was trying to learn and diagnose possible memory issues....I must admit though, the techs recommended the settings for virtual memory you see stated above and I do have more free memory under heavy load so I think the settings will be OK.
Next its on to a better card! ( ATI 4870 X2 ? )Thanks again for your help!!!!

a better card? Holy heavens!!! Do you have too much cash or something? You already have a 9800 GT.... give it a rest already!!!!!

I really don't think you will see that much improvement anymore over your current setup.... maybe a few fps in some games, but that's about it.....ofr most applications, what you have now is overkill anyways. That's not to say that I'm not completely jealous, of course....

LOL.. overkill...wasnt sure theres such a thing!..LOL J/K'ing! Its not that I NEED the newer card, but I do alot of modeling and animation for people and myself and making sure things run right on newer as well as older cards is kinda important so I tend to update cards ASAP. This 9800 GT is ok, but the next gen cards are really starting to leap ahead. I do want to see about OC'ing the processor though just a bit too.
Thanks for the replies all!