Hello Kathy,

I have been running ME for nearly a year and there are quite a number of problems 
as ME is part of the transition from '98 to XP.

Carl D (Duggan) who posts on this forum is quite right when he said, a few days ago, 
that ME is alright until you start to add programs to it, becuase it is usualy low 
on physical memory, ESPECIALLY if it is an up-grade from '9x with insufficient RAM.

There is a definite reason for this and it concerns virtual versus physical memory.

'98 runs best on about 256Mb RAM if you have big applications and if your ME is like 
mine you will have 256Mb RAM but twice the running processes of '98 (About 30 at 
start-up as opposed to '98 and only 17).

When I start up my free RAM falls to 130Mb from 256Mb so the system has already used 
126Mb and if you only have 128Mb to start with this then leaves 2Mb.

ME has the same number of running processes as XP especially if you start adding 
programs which run at start-up.

With RealOne player running and this browser open plus Norton and several anti-hacking 
and anti-spyware programs running I have thirty-seven processes running as I write. 
Free RAM is down to 88Mb, system and user resources are down to 46% and the resources 
available for the GDI's is down to 77%. (Using an Opera browser with IE/OE ... NOT 
... running! ;- ) Big tip!

I use Opera 6.04 which uses less resources than IE6.0 and can run with 20-30 windows 
open before getting a low resources warning, BUT since adding RAM-Page 1.6 to the 
system if the limit of RAM (physical memory) falls to 15Mb RAM-Page clears a further 
30Mb of RAM which is simply standing there full of information which the computer 
may not ... actually ... be using.

I ordered 256Mb of additional SDRAM to bring the total RAM up to 512Mb SDRAM which 
is the same as all of the new XP systems being sold, generally, world-wide.

So there is a "share-off" between physical memory, virtual memory and the available 
system resources, all sources of memory forming part of the entire ability for the 
computer to ... actually ... compute.

Ability to compute lies in available memory. Speed of computing is affected by processor 
speed and disk speed and by the surface speed of any virtual-memory swap-file in 
use as they run faster at the outer edge of the disk.

So if you have up-dated from '98 then I would say that you need at least 256Mb RAM. 
If you already have 256Mb RAM you should consider adding a further 256Mb RAM from 
say:  CRUCIAL who sell RAM modules made by  MICRON at a very reasonable price.

Otherwise you can use RAMpage_1.6 
to clear a bit of RAM just to stop the system crashing or freezing, with the benefit 
that the program is free!

I set the free-up level at 15Mb so if free RAM is low and I open a program like WORD 
it does not freeze the entire system.

RAM-Page is NOT a RAM-"Booster" there is no such thing, as either you have physical 
RAM or you do not.

You can also test your existing RAM with Doc_Memory_2.0

I hope that this will be of help to you.  Also take a look at DRWATSON.EXE , OTUNEUP.EXE 
, SYSMON.EXE RSRCMTR.EXE , REGEDIT.EXE , SCANREGW.EXE , and DXDIAG.EXE on your system 
so as to familiarize yourself with the way in which the system works, and make ABSOLUTELY 
certain that you have made a Windows Start-Up diskette (bootdisk) in Add-Remove programs 
in the Control Panel, as this is a life-line in case of mishap. Then you can get 
to the DOS prompt as you could with '98 and use C:\scandisk /all , C:\scanreg /restore 
and C:\DEL C:\_RESTORE if the restore archive gets too big.

Last possible problem spyware (advertising-Trojans) and to assist you you can use 
 SpyBot 
      Click on English flag. This is a very interesting program and very revealing.

Need help, then you know where to come. Iain.

 
Home of the Ultimate Boot Disk








On Friday, August 9, 2002 at 11:03 pm, Kathy Waxler wrote:
>I have a question about Windows says it's "Dangerously Low on System Resources. 
In 
>the older version of Windows that I have at work (95 or 98 I think), I can use TaskManager 
>to find out what applications are running and eating up my resources. I can't seem 
>to find anything in ME that does the same thing. Am I hallucinating that Task Manager 
>is part of Windows? 
>
>And thanks for confirming for me that opening the same application more than once 
>(even if it's closed in between) eats up resources. That seemed like what was happening, 
>but I didn't have any way to prove my hypothesis -- not being all that technical. 
>Thanks! 
>

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