"Windows is running low on memory" error occurs for almost every game

[TheRaazberry]

So I upgraded to 8.1 last month and ever since then, whenever I play games like GRID, BF4, and Arma 3, after a little while a pop up comes up saying "Please close your program, windows is running low on memory." That's absolutely absurd because my system is well equipped to never run low on memory. I looked online and changed virtual memory available to basically the entire ram thats available on my PC but no luck. Does anyone else have this issue? My friend upgraded to 8.1 but this never occured for him so I'm really curious as to why it occurs and what solutions can be done.

Specs:
Sager NP9150
Windows 8.1
8 gigs ram 1600 mhz
2 gigs Nvidia GTX 675M
500 gb 7200rpm HDD

[Miku]

how much space is left on your HDD?

[KillerKoala78]

Also would be helpful to look at the Performance tab (I believe) of Task Manager to see what your memory usage is at the time of the error.

Before you game, you should also make sure any non-essential programs are completely closed (including your system tray).

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

You need to leave at least 10% of HDD empty and not fill it to the brim.

[TheRaazberry]

I have about 280 gigs of hard drive space left. Ram usage only goes up to 4 gigs at most.

[_I_]

kill some background programs, or run msconfig, and disable everythign on the startup tab, then restart the pc