Vista got a lot of things right. It also got a few things wrong. The naggy UAC “are you sure you want to do this” prompts is one example. Another annoyance is the sudden dialog that interrupts what you’re doing to tell you that less than 25% of your RAM is free. This warning would probably be warranted and helpful on systems with a small amount of RAM, but on mine 25% free memory is hardly anything to worry about – it means I have at least 1 GB of memory left.
Fortunately, like most things, there’s a fix.
- Open the registry editor. (Click the Windows orb, type “regedit”, and hit enter.)
- Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WDI\DiagnosticModules\.
- Export the following folders. This is your backup in case something goes wrong.
{5EE64AFB-398D-4edb-AF71-3B830219ABF7}
{45DE1EA9-10BC-4f96-9B21-4B6B83DBF476}
{C0F51D84-11B9-4e74-B083-99F11BA2DB0A} - Take ownership of the each folder mentioned in step 3. (You can take ownership by right clicking the folder and then hitting permissions. Click the advanced button and change owner to your user. Click OK and then give full control to your user group. Hit OK again.)
- Delete the folders from step 3.
- Reboot and enjoy.
Update: After doing the above steps, you should know that once memory runs out, it is out. You will have no warning. Once your memory gets maxed out, programs will behave very erratic and suddenly crash without warning. I’ve decided that this side effect can be just as annoying as the popups. If you consistently push your machine’s memory to its limits, you should think twice about disabling the low memory messages. Having said that, I still prefer using my machine without Vista’s nagginess.
Author: jay
November 17th, 2011
at 1:35 pm
Thanks for this. In win7, I also had to enable “Full Access” for my user in order to delete the keys (from the Permissions > Advanced > Permissions > Edit).
Win7, in all its brilliance as a modern OS, is offering to close the Desktop Window Manager because I only have 55% of my RAM — that’s over 2GB — free.
I believe the bug reacts to manually changing the size of your paging file. In my case, I shrunk it to avoid swapping on the SSD.
Author: Godwill
July 6th, 2011
at 11:23 am
Am getting an error while logged in as administrator:Can not delete{5EE64AFB-398D-4edb-3B830219ABF7}:Error while deleting key.any help please
Author: Shreyansh
March 13th, 2011
at 6:07 pm
@georgeflug Thanks, it worked for me on Windows 7.
Author: 我勒个去的博客 » 禁止WIN7提示内存不足
January 27th, 2011
at 1:42 am
[...] 遂用我的半吊子英文G 果然找到了解决办法 果然还是老外厉害 点击查看原文 [...]
Author: georgeflug
May 4th, 2010
at 5:50 pm
Thanks for the post. A little extra help for anyone who needs it:
I was getting an access denied error when trying to give myself Full Control rights to the keys. Here’s how I fixed it:
Right-click the Key and click Properties.
Click Advanced
Go to the Owner tab.
Click on “Administrators” or whatever your username is.
Click OK. This changes the owner from “TrustedInstaller” to you.
Now click “Administrators” or your username and place a check next to “Full Control”.
Click OK.
Now you can delete the key.
This must be done individually for all three keys.
Author: Dj
April 22nd, 2010
at 6:36 am
thanks!!
i tried this one, now it is time to see what will happen next!
thanks bro
Author: Microsux
April 11th, 2010
at 6:19 am
didnt get it on Fallout 3 but a LOT of times during Starcraft II which can be SO ANNOYING esp. when you’re in the middle of tyring to win a 1v1
Author: Windows 7 (vs. VS) - Öt Perc .NET - Molnár Gergő blogja - devPortal
February 16th, 2010
at 10:46 am
[...] (kis registry trükközéssel) kikapcsolható a dolog: Disabling the “Your computer is low on memory” and “Close programs to prevent information loss…. [...]
Author: Quinn
January 13th, 2010
at 12:25 pm
Thanks for this, it kept popping up when I was playing Fallout 3. I had to also set permissions for full access before I could delete those folders.
Author: Matt
December 15th, 2009
at 10:04 am
I have 8GB ram and it starts going off around 5.2GB used space. What a load of CROCK, Microsoft.
Author: ernst
October 19th, 2009
at 7:01 am
thanks very much, this was the last remaining annoying message on windows 7 for me.
although i would prefer to tune the values, e. g. low memory warnings if there are only <100M left. but the default value of 25% is crazy.
Author: Kylir
June 17th, 2009
at 9:42 pm
It wouldn’t hurt to try it as an administrator. When I did it, my user had full admin rights and I did those steps exactly as I described.
Try adding the “everyone” user group to the permissions for the registry keys. Give it full control before trying to remove the keys again.
Do you get the same permission denied message when trying to delete any one of the three keys? What happens if you try to make a key and then immediately remove it?
Author: Awong
June 16th, 2009
at 11:03 pm
yea im pretty sure, im taking ownership with my user. should i be on admin?
Author: Kylir
June 15th, 2009
at 11:00 pm
Are you taking ownership of the three folders as described in step 4?
Author: Awong
June 15th, 2009
at 12:49 pm
so i get a message while im trying to delete the 3 files about a problem while deleting
it says:
“Cannot delete {folder name}: error while deleting key.”
can anyone help
Author: Kylir
May 12th, 2009
at 1:16 pm
Are you logged in with administrative privileges? I would suspect there are security hiccups preventing you from modifying those keys.
Author: B
May 10th, 2009
at 3:18 pm
I keep getting access denied on all the operations on the three registry entries.
Author: Ben
March 15th, 2009
at 2:44 am
Thanks, this was really helpful!