Windows? Virtual Memory? What the hell?!

First off, don't tell me to switch to Linux or some other OS.  You'll soon find out why.

I never understood the point of virtual memory in modern computers.  RAM literally grows on trees, most people have at least a gig or two of the stuff in their boxes, and the only time they'll ever fill up all that RAM will be pretty much never.

So I have my good ol' gaming box, a gig of RAM, Windows 2000.  I fire up a game and begin playing.

In the middle of my game, the game CtDs and Windows tells me I'm "out of virtual memory".

What.  The.  Fuck.

I go to my management console and create a meter to keep track of my memory usage, and fire up the game again.  I play for a while and fool around, then close the game.

Maximum amount of memory used: 400 MBs.

Out of one fucking gig.

One fucking gig of RAM and Windows can't even be assed to use it all.  It has to compulsively cram every little thing into its virtual memory for reasons I never found out and probably never will.

I need a geek.  I need someone to tell me just how the fuck Windows manages its memory.  Why does Windows think it's logical to put shit in VM when it's still got more than half the physical RAM available?

Goddammit OP, you're still not getting it and you obviously didn't read the wiki article.  If you did actually read it, you fucking fail at reading comprehension.

Swap space != Virtual Memory

Long story short, Windows requires at least a small swap file for it's Virtual Memory system, whereas a Linux system running the same software might not.  It has to do with the different approaches to memory management, but I can see trying to explain it to you would just cause confusion.

Also, the Task Manager has never been an accurate tool, which is why non-noobs don't use it.  It doesn't really show every process and it basically guesses at memory usage (and seeing as you don't know what the numbers even mean, it's even more useless to you).

tl;dr:  You need a swap file in Windows, even if it's just 256MB.  Even if Windows says it isn't using it, it is.  GTFO.