Virtual Memory Not Working on Classic Mac OS

When you have a lot of physical RAM installed in your Mac OS Classic era Macintosh, sometimes you might find that it isn’t possible to enable Virtual Memory. This can be a problem as some software, especially games, refuses to launch if you don’t have Virtual Memory enabled.

In this situation, one trick can be to create a large RAM disk using the Memory control panel. This consumes a load of the available System memory and magically makes the Virtual Memory options re-appear.

Once you’ve finished with the software that requires Virtual Memory, delete the contents of the RAM disk (if there is any) – fastest way is to just to select the icon on the desktop and then Erase from the Special menu, then turn off RAM Disk in the Memory control Panel.