Help! I'm losing my memory.

[jambin]

When im on the net surfing, etc., i also do may things at once.
1. surfing with 4 or 5 windows
2. downloadin some large file
3. checking my e-mail

In the past after about 2 hours of this my 96mb of ram would be to zero and system would crash.

I dont know if its this new install of win98se or some other problem but nowdays my memory drops down to zero within about20 minutes or so.

The only way i can keep going is to use a memory program like freemem pro every 20 minutes or so to free up some and keep going.

Any ideas? I built this system myself so i know it pretty well.

abit bh6 mb
celeron 300a(not overclocked)
tnt 1 16mb video card
mx300 sound card
2(13gb) ide hard drives
32x ide cdrom
36x scsi cdrom
yamahaw 4416 scsi cd burner
orb 2.2gb drive on 2nd parrallel port
paperport color scanner

thanks for any help

p.s. I've disable all non essential start up programs, and any thing that seemed to be running in the background, closed my case back up, etc., but problem is still there.

[Target]

No solution for you, but I wanted to let you know you are not alone....I have exact same issues you describe. My 256Mb slowly disappears until its all gone.

Would love to find a resolution.

[daveleau]

Well this is a round-about fix since I have never experienced a crashing problem like this but you can set either Memturbo ($20 shareware) or Rambooster (freeware) to recover ram not being used by your system. All you have to do is set a trigger level for recovery ( I set mine to 20 MB since I have 256) and it will automatically recover your ram for you.
Dave

[Serge]

Well it seems like a memory leak.. maybe you don't see some program running in background that is the problem one.

Also I've seen programs like freemem crash pcs... destroying OS's/Partitions... each time there was special circumstances.. which I don't remember. Hrm.. just something to think about... I guess if you're tried everything you could format and do a clean windoze install and go to M$ website to dl all the fixes.. and see than.

[daremon]

You can also try to goto control panel/system and let windows manage your virtual memory (supposing you have set yourself a min/max)

Dimitris

[a Bill]

If you use Netscape, you have a memory problem. Netscape doesn't surrender the memory when it's done.

[gmarsh1]

This happens to me sometimes. I "fixed" it by disabling my active desktop. Sometimes when I do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete and check on tasks running, I see that MSIE has two connections up and running at the same time and resources just drain away. Since disabling Active Desktop, I don't have that drain anymore. Good Luck
GeoR

[Chaostician]

If your running Win98 try these steps and I'll explain the reasoning behind it.

1) First Right click on "my computer" choose properties and then go to the performance tab. Select "virtual memory", select to specify your virtual memory to 2.5 times th ammount of ram in your sys, click ok and choose not to reboot yet.
(This is your swap file, windows is terrible at managing it by it's self, it gets so big that it slows down your sys and it'll crash)

2) Same area, i.e. - properties of "my computer" on the performance tab. Choose "File System"; Under Hard Disk Settings at the "typical role of this computer" change it to network server. Click apply and ok, don't reboot yet.
(this allows for more free cache to be used)

3) Last step, hacking your system.ini file. Click the start button, run, and type system.ini; when it comes up scroll down to [Vcache], 3/4 down the page, and place these two line under it so it looks like this:
[vcache]
minfilesize=16384
maxfilesize=16384

(this sets it so Win9x can use 16 mb of ram for "virtual cache" max and min. )

Chaostician
If anyone has problems or a better solution to win98 lock-up's feel free to e-mail me.



[This message has been edited by Chaostician (edited 01-02-2000).]

[jambin]

Thanks for all these, i will try them out.