Winword.exe is taking up so much memory!

[tgilham]

My computer has been giving me low virtual memory warnings, and when I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del I notice that Winword.exe is taking up a lot of memory in the processes. Could anyone tell me why this is happening and what I can do to stop it?

I'm not the most knowlegeable computer user so the more simpler the explanation, the better!

Thanks for your help.

[Aramok]

word sometimes does this - power down your machine (completly off - not a reboot) and start again - if it continues try to see if it is always with 1 file or something similar.... post back if more help is needed

[SuperSparks]

Hi tgilham, welcome to VirtualDr

How much memory is it using? My Word 2002 uses 25 to 30Mb normally.

It's also worth noting that WinXP is a memory hog compared to earlier versions. You really need a minimum of 256Mb RAM, despite what MS claim.

[tgilham]

Thanks for the welcome.

I only have 128 RAM, so maybe that's why I'm having low memory. I can understand that Word would use 25-30 MB when it's in use, but the WinWord is using memory even when it's not in use.

[SuperSparks]

Yes, Word is an app that does leave a process running after you've killed it, though you can always click on End Process if you really need to.

I think if you buy another stick of RAM your problems will go away.

[bcool21]

hi tgilman, that is usually caused by running outlook with word as the email editor and outlook has been open for a long time. If you want to get rid of that problem you need to go to outlook and then tools>options>mail format and unchek the two boxes there.. and that should solve your problem..another thing would be to allocate more vram to the pc to do that clik start>right clik my computer>properties>advanced>performance options>change enter a new max size (usually at least twice the minimum)if you have a big hdd(20g or more ) set it to 3000 then clik on set>ok>ok>ok then rebbot pc and see the difference in performance...Good Luck

[tgilham]

Thanks, I removed this option from outlook so Winword is no longer taking up memory.

One more thing that's taking up memory is Messenger, which I don't even have running. I've tried to uninstall it, but it says it is write protected or in use by another application. I've closed any applications that I can think of (including Outlook) that Messenger might be associated with, but it still won't let me uninstall it. Does anybody have any ideas as to what other applications it might be running in?

Thanks.