TF2: "OS Paged Pool Memory Low"

[BB]

This is a simple question with a long explanation- just recently TF2 has been giving me a warning in the top right corner saying "OS Paged Pool Memory Low", and now it's starting to crash entirely with the same reason. After looking around for fixes and closing background applications etc it was still appearing, so I did some more digging and found this.

Open the registry editor. That's done by going to Run, then type in "regedit."

In the registry: HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ Session Manager\Memory Management

Double click on "PagedPoolSize". Hexadecimal is listed first. Change the "Value Data" to one of these below: Note: You only need to enter EITHER Hexadecimal or Decimal. They both are the same.

Code: Megabytes Hexadecimal Decimal 192Mb 0c000000 201326592 256Mb 10000000 268435456 384Mb 18000000 402653184

You do not need anything bigger than 400Mb... in most cases 300Mb is too much as well. The bigger the number, the more memory you devote to the Paged Pool.

Seems simple enough- I'm not too keen on digging around my registry but it's not an in-depth hack. I found the entry in question though and the value is currently set to 0. I'd have thought this would mean I currently have zero paged pool memory which obviously can't be right...

My question: am I looking in the right place for this if the value is currently zero, and am I likely to mess anything up by changing it to one of the values suggested? I'll just add since there seems to be a lot of confusion about this online, the paged pool and page file apparently aren't the same thing- a lot of suggestions say to increase the latter via My Computer but they won't help.

ETA: WinXP 32 bit 1GB ram, for reference

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Correct me if I'm wrong..your system only has one gig of ram?

I don't think TF2 itself is the problem here. XP alone is a memory hog. Two gigs is the preferred minimum, really. Steam is no memory lightweight either and pile on other processes are other drains as well.

Essentially your system is putting more load on the virtual memory allocated from the hard drive and that itself is a poor substitute for the real deal. Increasing the page file won't go very far and in extreme cases can very well cause HDD to fail sooner. In fact, it isn't exactly considered best practice to do so anyway.

The longshort of it is: you need more ram.

[BB]

The page file isn't the problem though- it's the annoyingly similarly-named paged pool memory that's causing the trouble. I'm no tech wizard but from what I read the paged pool memory is a little chunk of ram that gets reserved for device drivers and the suchlike for reasons that are beyond me. It's a separate thing from the page file and I've read on the steam forums of people with 2-3gb of ram getting the same error.

TF2 repeatedly tells me when it's showing this warning I have about 160mb of paged pool memory available and 155mb or so is being used. It's only been this way since the update so I guess something broke along the way there, but regardless people do say the above registry fix works wonders. I'm just wondering why the value is apparently zero megabytes if TF2 is telling me I have 160mb, and if that would be safe to change.

I am hoping to upgrade my ram soon though.

[akaSM]

Huh, I remember seeing an option for that "paged memory pool" thingy, or something similar in my Source games. I think it's under the graphics settings of the game.

[BB]

As memory serves, that option is in L4D, L4D2, and Portal 2, but I looked in all of the TF2 options boxes and couldn't find anything relating to it, unless there's a console switch for it.