Something Trivial

[MasterDecker]

My system is as follows.
AMD Duron 700
ABIT KT7 MoBo
WD 30 Gig HDd 7200 rpm DMA 5
WD 1.2 Gig HDd 5400 rpm DMA 2
6x4x32 CD/RW
10x 40 DVDRom
Internal Zip 250
SB Audigy Platinum
Maxtor Ultra ATA 100 PCI Controller card
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows 98 SE
512 megs PC 133 SDRAM slot 0
256 megs PC 133 SDRAM slot 1

I have NOT had ANY problems with win 98SE having too much memory, and usualy when I run it, I have about 80% free.
Win 2k pro, I have about 78% free usualy, and still no problems. EXCEPT when I had my 512 meg stick in slot 1 and my 256 meg stick in slot 0. AFTER I reversed them, win 98SE had ZERO problems, and of course neither did my 2000 pro.

As for swap file I have set BOTH OS's to use the secondary HDd COMPLETELY as the swap file. I've run over 30 different things at once to test to see if I COULD get an out of resources problem, and with that setup, I couldn't. Benchmarking the system under 98SE, I was equal to that of a P3 1.0 GHz system. Under win 2k pro, I was at a P3 950. As for laptop configs, I am now sure how to go about changing things around inside them, so can't say. But I have not had any problems running anything under either OS, since my upgrade with the 512 meg stick. When I just had 256 megs, I would get the out of resources problem, running AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ. After further research, it seems that AIM AND AoL use up massive amounts of resources, and gets even more greedy then Windows 9.x does.
Try unloading as much of your boot up programs as possible, AND if you are using Norton anyting, disable it from the start up, because it is a resource hogg as well, AND their "crash manager" actualy GIVES you MORE crashes then it helps stop.

Master Decker

[dsredfox]

Thanks MasterDecker,
Don't think my amount of memory is a problem either. I think my settings are. Just trying to get some imput on my settings with DMA....Mainly how they are set in Bios as per a couple of posts back.

[Michael Chiew]

dsredfox

HEARTY APPETITE
Your heart's in the right place, your penchant for learning praiseworthy, your methods of acquiring and applying the knowledge from this thread, though, need to be more focused, defined. Ad hoc acquisition and application of knowledge is fine so long you first have a workable understanding of it.

GET PEN AND PAPER READY
It means more research before attempting to make changes to your computer; it also means making a plan and documenting whatever changes you've made so that backtracking is precise (no guessing game) when things go wrong.

NO PROBLEM FROM THE START
Would it surprise you to learn that you didn't have a problem to begin with. You can live with system resources between 60% to 72% free without batting an eyelid. It's cool, nothing to worry about. When it drops to, say, 10%, alarm bells would probably ring, telling you to shut down programs or risk a crash.

HUMAN FOLLY MAIN CAUSE
Low system resources (62%/72% ain't low) are almost always the result of human folly. We get too many things going without realizing what we're doing. AOL, for example, takes up a great deal of resources.

VCACHE
Rocketmech and friends got it right. You're safe with 60%/72% resources free. Rhino302 suggestion to keep your ram at 512MB has a familiar ring to it though Windows 98 can address ram up to 2GB. There have been rumblings about how Windows 98 does not work well with 512MB ram because Vcache (disk cache) is known to have caused some trouble in this area.

VCACHE (DISK CACHE) - LEAVE IT ALONE
Vcache, by the way, is best left alone to do its work dynamically, especially for Windows 98. Do not tamper with Vcache (disk cache). When you've got 544MB ram, your swap file is in excellent shape. No reason to adjust swap file size. Let it do its work, dynamically.

DMA
When you first looked at DMA, was it checked. If so, you've got DMA support. If not, you're running in PIO mode. It's one way or the other. It's uncomplicated.

MSCONFIG
Did you make a back-up of Msconfig before you attempted to alter it. Advisable to do so. Your experiments with it does suggest you need a back-up.

BIOS SETTINGS
The BIOS settings appear to be in order.

SYSTEM RESOURCES - A DEFINITION
Perhaps a definition of system resources would put your mind at ease with a 60%/72% resource free status.

SYSTEM RESOURCES AREN'T RAM
The first thing to remember about system resources is to separate them from ram. Ram and system resources are two entities by themselves. Ram is physical memory. System resources are Windows components.

Some people say that when you're low on system resources, you've got too little memory and too much going on at the same time. Mind you, it's a logical assumption. The remedy: close up as much as you can, or add ram, and you'd be swimming fine. Not so. At least, not in your case. You're more than just fine with ram.

USER AND GDI INTERFACE
System resources involves routines on the USER and GDI interface, no doubt about it (by the way, they take up very little memory, quite negligible). But there's more to the problem of dwindling system resources than you ever dreamed of in your slumber. Consider systemic and human elements and you have a clearer picture of system performance. So what's involved?

SOME FUNCTIONS
Interrupt functions are involved; threading and multithreading within the system are involved; Co-operative Multitasking and Pre-emptive Multitasking are involved. Is your OS capable of trafficking in multithreaded requests when it's bogged down by programs unwilling to release resources after they're done. MS-DOS 16-bit programs tend to do this, although, by and large, these are said to be rare. Does your CPU free up resources efficiently, moving on to the next task at hand without causing a bottleneck on the system bus. Is something slowing down your BIOS in resurrecting and initiating interrupt functions.

HEAPS HAVE 'EM
System resources are memory areas named heaps, comprising 2 core components - USER.EXE (user components such as keystrokes) and GDI.EXE (graphical elements such as icons, fonts, cursors). They are stored in segments known as heaps, 32-bit heaps. For backward compatibility, half of them are still 16-bit.

HERE'S THE TROUBLE
32-bit heaps handle system resources efficiently, releasing them immediately after they are not needed. 16-bit heaps, however, aren't following the program of efficiency. They tend to hold on to resources until you quit an application. And this is where you often encounter problems with low system resources.

NO GUESSWORK, PLEASE, WE'RE SINGAPOREANS
We ought to take the "guesswork" out of the troubleshooting process where system resources are concerned. Analyze your problem with the tools Windows provides for tracking resource performance. Your best tools are RESOURCE METER and SYSTEM MONITOR. The first shows you how SYSTEM, USER, GDI RESOURCES are doing; the second measures stresses on systemic performance. Great stuff. I never tire of using them - even when I'm generally more than 90% resource free. The lowest I've ever encountered is 88%. But don't let these figures fool you.

RESOURCE METER
Monitors the values of free System, User, GDI resources. Here's where you'd be able to tell which resources have been affected.

When you run RESOURCE METER, the utility's icon is added to the taskbar. It gives you a visual representation of your resource status. Watch out for the colors on the icon. Green means your resources are above reproach. Yellow indicates a drop to about 30%. Red - you're down to 15% or less. When you're at the 10% mark, you would've reached a point where you need to slow down and take stock of yourself (the human element). This is where user habits are defined. Too busy doing this and that, opening this and that, closing this and that, too busy downloading this and that - all add up to unrecommended user habits. Start shutting down programs or run the risk of a freeze up.

Resource Meter does not monitor systemic stresses. So you wouldn't know what components are undergoing severe pounding from system activity. System Monitor tells you how your interior is functioning under the enormous weight of non-stop system activity. This is the fun part. Generally, I enjoy every minute of it.

SYSTEM MONITOR
What's good about System Monitor?

It gives you "real-time" measures of system processes in action. You can monitor a number of system activity: kernel: processor usage, swapfile usage, memory usage (allocated memory, locked memory, etc., etc.). The fun begins when you run System Monitor and do your work at the same time. See for the first time (in your case) how system processes run up and down the chart. Lower percentages indicate not much activity, higher percentages foretell a busy, busy system at work. If you encounter performance problems at higher levels, you can check the charts for bottlenecks and "suspect" system behavior.

At the time of writing, I'm running System Monitor. Kernel: Threads - 30%; Dirty Data - 13KB; Processor Usage - 10%; Kernel Virtual Machine - 1%; Locked Memory - 37MB

So how does all that information help you.

In two words - performance tracking.

For example, if you suspect that an application might not be freeing memory when it finishes using it (memory leaks), check the values of Kernel: Threads. Higher values indicate memory leaks. If the values for Memory Manager: Discards and Memory Manager: Pageouts show a great deal of activity, performance problems might be associated with memory stresses. Hence, you add more ram.

The process of charting stresses on systemic elements over time sure beats the hell out of guessing the causes of low system resources.

By the way, dsredfox, do give us a detailed description of the problem you're facing now. Any error messages involved.

Michael Chiew

[dsredfox]

Ok....
After reading Mr. Chiew's post I can honestly say that I have very little, in the way of problems with my computer, to report. The only error message I'm getting now is "Red Face". I feel very humbled by the vast knowledge that has been put in front of me.
Thankyou Mr. Chiew and all of those that have answered my posts. My computer education is only begining but I'm learning from the Best. brad

[Ifish25]

According to Microsoft, and posted by another member on the forum, running over 512 megs of memory can cause a low resources warning in 95, 98, and 2k due to memory allocation by Windows for the cache. If there is too much memory, Vcache may consume all of the virtual memory. They do offer safeguards and workarounds.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q253912

(Leave it to MS to complicate even a URL) I have trouble making the cgi program accept the whole URL here as the link, so you may need to copy it and paste by hand.

The problem may not occur immediately. It seems to be cumulative. My son first encountered problem after adding a 512 chip to a 256 and 128--->896meg. To the uninformed me, I thought this would be memory heaven, but it was a headache. I am planning on reformatting next week and trying the fix offered by MS that will allow computer to run the max. MS says that 98 is designed to accept up to, but not over, 1gig.

[jray]

I personally like to eliminate all the garbage that programs and even hardware drivers like start with windows. In Win98se, with no programs open, I've had 95% resources free!

[BobyJo]

Boy I never saw so many replies to the Ram installed on this system. He asked about system recources, or at least I think that was his question in the original post..

System recources has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of Ram installed in the system.

Go to start, run, type in "msconfig" and press enter. You will bring up a screen with tabs on the top. Click on the "STARTUP" tab. Look at the programs you have running in the background. If any is listed twice or more, remove all except only one. If you have anything running that is not necessary. Remove it. This is one place you will be able to increase system recources.

[dsredfox]

Thanks all... Formatting and re-installing Will post back. brad

[Strawbs]

I'm running XP now, but from memory, I think you can limit the amount of RAM win 9x\Me uses in the "system information" program, this would allow you to test if the problems with excessive resources is indeed a RAM problem without having to remove any of it. I think it's one of the check boxes under the startup\advanced tab usually used for troubleshooting. if it turns out to be the cause of high resource usage then you can leave it checked and set the amount manually.

Hope this helps.