You receive a "There is not enough free memory to run this program" error message when you start an Office 2000 program

When you start any of the Microsoft Office 2000 programs, for example, Microsoft Excel 2000, you receive an error message similar to the following: If you click OK, you receive the following error message:

This behavior occurs when you attempt to start any of the programs included in Office on a computer running Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 and you have either, turned off virtual memory, or set the maximum size of the virtual memory too low. You may also receive these error messages when you start an Office program on a computer running Microsoft Windows NT if the paging file is too small.

To resolve this behavior, turn on virtual memory or increase the maximum size of the virtual memory setting, under Windows 95 and Windows 98, or increase the size of the Windows NT paging file.

To Turn On Virtual Memory

Windows 95 or Windows 98

Office programs require that virtual memory be turned on when you run them under Windows 95 or Windows 98. To turn on virtual memory, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.
2. Click the Performance tab.
3. Click Virtual Memory.
4. Click to select "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings (recommended)."
5. Click OK, and then click Close.
6. When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.

Windows NT

In Windows NT 4.0, you cannot turn off virtual memory. You can increase the size of the paging file, the file that provides virtual memory. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop. Click Properties on the shortcut menu.
2. Click the Performance tab.
3. Click Change.
4. In the Virtual Memory dialog box, you can change the parameters for your paging file (initial size, maximum size, and so on). After you change the settings, click Set, and then click OK.
5. Click Close.
6. When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.

In Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT, virtual memory allows the computer to use hard disk space as random access memory (RAM). The computer uses virtual memory to augment the normal RAM that is installed on the computer.

If for some reason you turned off virtual memory in Windows 95 or Windows 98, or the maximum setting for virtual memory is too low, or if you reduced the size of the paging file in Windows NT, Office programs may not start correctly or at all. This behavior may occur even if the computer has a large amount of installed, RAM 32 megabytes (MB) or more. The amount of virtual memory required varies depending on the amount of installed RAM. For a system that has 16 MB of RAM, a minimum of approximately 16 MB of virtual memory is required to start an Office program. However, increasing the amount of virtual memory will also greatly increase the performance of your computer under Windows.

For more information about virtual memory in Windows, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: