Are you sure this is a 'problem' with Symantec? I've been using Norton Util's and Antivirus for years without ever hearing that. I have however known about the issues with MS operating systems (some, not all.......NT/2000 don't seem to be bothered but then, they're a heavy duty network operating system made to run on multi processor servers with 1 GB of RAM and over). I recently went out and bought another 256 MB stick of RAM and added it to my 128 and have had NO problems or 'out of memory' errors from Norton. Also, I've never heard of anyone else having the same problem. It could be the 'out of memory' error Symantec gives you is directly related to the windows problem encountered when one exceeds 512 MB's of RAM. I will however go and do some reading at symantec's site in regard to this. As near as I can figure, if it is an issue....it must be an issue with the 9x/ME OS's.

What people need to remember is that even though RAM itself is cheap....you have to ask yourself, "Do I really need more RAM, or do I just want to have the additional bragging rights!?!?" To the best of my knowledge, unless you're running very high end graphical programs like autocad or softimage, you won't ever need more than 512 much less actually use that much. I've done some benchmarking on my system with the 384 MB's of RAM and even when I run several memory intensive programs at the same time, I rarely use all of my available RAM. Unless you plan on running one of the aforementioned programs, or others like them and playing games at the same time....I really can't see ever using all your RAM at one time. A lot of people seem to think adding more RAM will somehow 'speed up' their systems....not so, it will improve performance with a lot of software, but there comes a point where you will be spending money on RAM that will be sitting in the slot but basically being unused. As a rule of thumb........for most home computing I've found 128 MB's to be just about all anyone would need. For the serious gamer 256 seems to fit nicely. Anymore and you end up with RAM sitting idle.......a waste of $ in my books........no matter how cheap the RAM is.




On Sunday, August 19, 2001 at 2:05 pm, Charles wrote:

>Tamas,
>
>Your problem is two fold. The first is to tell Windows not to use so much memory 
>for it's cache. You can do this by going to Start then Run and typing in MSCONFIG.
>After clicking OK, click on the Advanced button. Go to and check Limit Memory to 
>and enter 512. (this will render the 256meg over 512 not used).
>
>It sucks but this is a known issue with Windows. It simply was never developed to 
>handle this much memory because none of us could afford it or our motherboards were 
>not able to have as much. Now that prices have dropped, we are all going out to 
buy 
>more memory only to find out that our operating system can't handle it!
>
>Symantec is finally admitting that their utilities program can't handle more than 
>256meg! They offer a 'workaround' but it still does not work on systems with more 
>that 256meg.
>
>They (Symantec) have not announced a fix. Nor do they seem concerned at all that 
>their product is flawed. I suppose they, like Microsoft, never anticipated RAM prices 
>dropping to the point where all of us 'common folk' would have this much memory 
in 
>our computers.
>
>What is really wrong about this and ticks me off the most is that both Microsoft 
>and Symantec have known about this limitation for months, perhaps years! It obviously 
>was never a 'high priority' concern to them because the majority of their customer 
>base didn't have this much RAM installed. So nobody complained about it.
>
>We should all write to them now to let them know how displeased we are about this.
>
>One final but drastic thing you could try is to pull a stick of memory out of your 
>computer and actually run with less.(Maybe get your money back?). 
>
>Again, this sucks, but I don't see either company addressing this as an 'issue'. 
>I wouldn't look for a software fix for quite some time (if at all!).
>
>I hope this helps. 
>I suggest you try Microsoft and Symantec web sites to get further information. 
>
>Good luck,
>Chaz






Written in response to:
re: Question about 'Dealing with Bad Memory (RAM)' (Charles: Sunday, August 19, 2001 at 2:05 pm)


Responses to this message:
re: Are you sure? (Charles: Monday, August 20, 2001 at 6:43 pm)
Out of memory errors (GaryE: Sunday, September 16, 2001 at 6:21 pm)

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