Physical Memory usage

[JordanSummers]

I have been monitoring my memory usage and can't figure out what is eating up every bit of my memory.

I've followed much advice on virtual memory settings and swapfile size, etc (from here and from windrivers.com) and I still don't seem to get it right.

Anybody who is really certain about their memory advice (and not just passing on what they've heard) please write.

I have 192 MB RAM (184 available) on a 533Mhz AMD with 30 GB HD (25 GB C:drive and 5GB D:drive).

Win 98SE with all current drivers and BIOS. What else is useful info?

I really want to tune this sucker once and then get on to business.

Thanks for the help.

JS

[BBA]

You might need to kill some TSR programs...

Go into msinfo32.exe and see what you can kill without causing problems...I think a lot.

[JordanSummers]

Thx, BBA.

After I went to msinfo32, I selected "software environment, running tasks" and I really don't have that much running - OS items, HP printer support, a couple of firewall programs, mouse,)

I am running selective startup (from msconfig) and I have very little that starts automatically. I don't know what "taskmon" and "ptsnoop" are for though.

for the amount that i am running, it seems like i should be able to have more memory constantly available or am i just off base?

I did find some interesting things under tools in msinfo. can a novice like me run those without too much damage?

Thanks for the advice.

JS

[Steve R Jones]

Keep in mind that unused ram is wasted ram.

[capybara]

i rememer a similar thread here. people with
huge amounts of ram [256MB x 3 sticks]
said they rountinely saw 150 mb being used,
not rarely if every more.
can anyone find this link? =) capybara

[NDC]

I have 1GB RAM on my Dual P3 900Mhz, and I don't have 1GB for bragging rights! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif Once I start opening huge graphic files in Photoshop and start multi-tasking between 2 or 3 applications, even 1GB falls to 3~7% in my memory resource meter. That's when it's time to close the apps and reopen them!

As soon as I power on my PC and boot to the desktop, about 180MB is already in use. To add to the fact that Win2K LOVES to hog as much of the memory as possible to load its system files to RAM, I have over 1200 fonts loaded on my system which is another reason so much memory is used up as soon as I boot to the Win2K desktop.

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 02-21-2001).]

[JordanSummers]

Thanks NDC

So my piddly little 192K doesn't carry much weight is the moral of the story here.

I do feel better knowing that this is "routine" and that closing down some apps from time to time makes things right. I've taken to rebooting occaisionally when I leave my desk. That seems to help restore memory.

Is there a program that will let me "re-claim" memory w/o rebooting?

Thx

[Jim9999]

System Resources aren't related to the amount of RAM. They're fixed heaps. Your 1GB is a great asset in handling large graphics, but the resources would be the same at 1GB or 128 MB.

System Resources are documented on the MS support site and in most books.

[NDC]

You can go to this site:

http://www.mathworld.co.kr/NDC/index.html


and go to the "Downloads" page and download Ram Booster. I basically use this program for monitoring my RAM level, but you can also use this program to recover memory resource. The reason I don't use memory recovery programs is because it's faster for me to just reboot the system than to run programs to tryin recover 1GB of RAM..... take much to long!

Only applications that causes me to reboot the system is Anti-Virus programs such as NAV2001 after doing a full scan...go here to read more about that issue:

http://pub51.ezboard.com/fxtreme89487frm2.showMessage?topicID=2.topic



[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 02-21-2001).]

[NDC]

Let me rephrase that..... I meant memory usage level. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif Sorry about the confusion there, Jim9999.

I monitor my memory usage using RAM Booster, because I've noticed that Windows Task Manager is rather flacky.... Look here to see the cause that lead me to that conclussion:


http://pub51.ezboard.com/fxtreme89487frm2.showMessage?topicID=2.topic

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 02-21-2001).]

[JordanSummers]

thanks again - i'm off to both those sites and I appreciate the comments on re-booting.

js