programs won't use all of my memory before 'out of memory' errors

my laptop has 4GB of memory but none of my programs will ever use it all for some reason! all programs will only use up to 2GB until it gives me the program's error message that it is out of memory! Ableton for example. how do I fix?

Brink said:

Hello Alduins,

Usually an "out of memory" type error could be caused if your hard drive is low on free space, and/or you either turned off the page file or set the page file to small.

If the hard drive is low on free space, then you could move the page file to another hard drive that has plenty of space, or you may need to start freeing up space on the hard drive.

You could set the page file to be managed by the system, or increase it's size.

Virtual Memory Paging File - Change

Hope this helps for now, :)
Shawn

I got >20 GB free hard drive space, but I get memory out errors if a particular program (in this case Ableton) uses >2GB of memory as displayed in task manager. despite having 4GB on the system

Is Ableton a 32 bit or 64 bit application?
Can you post a screenshot of what you are seeing in Task Manager.