Trash

To make a lot of movements while accomplishing little. In the context of computer systems, thrashing usually refers to virtual memory operating systems that are spending most of their time moving data in and out of virtual memory (swapping pages) rather than actually executing programs. A sure sign that your computer is thrashing is when an application stops responding but the disk drive light keeps blinking on and off. Thrashing is generally caused by too many processes competing for scarce memory resources. To temporarily stop thrashing, you need to terminate one or more applications. To stop it permanently, you need to install more main memory.