Windows 2000 Memory Management

Memory allocation and reallocation in Windows 2000 were done by the virtual memory manager. It is a software program that controls how paging is performed. It is designed to support any type of system architecture.

Virtual Address Map: In Windows 2000, every user process has its own virtual address space. Virtual addresses are 32 bits long. So, each process has 4GB (2³²) of virtual address space. Out of 4 GB, 2GB reserved for the operating system remains 2GB can be shared by processes.

Windows 200 Paging: In windows 2000, a page should be in one of the three states:
i. Available: Pages are not currently used by this process.
ii. Reserved: A set of continuous pages that the virtual memory manager sets aside for a process, but don’t count in the process’s memory quota until used. When a process needs to write to memory some of the reserves are committed to the process.
iii. Committed: Page for which the virtual memory manager has set aside space in its paging file, the disk file to which it writes pages when removing them from main memory.