256M butr memory-starved???

[onedisciple@earthlink.net]

I have WIndows XP on a Pentium 4 system with 256M of RAM Yet, if I
have Netscape 4.79 open, with, say, four windows and Windows Explorer
running, the system acts like it is starved for memory. I have over 4G
in free space on disk. I just raised my virtual memory 50 500M from
384M. If I have, say, seven Netscape windows open, I get frequent times
when just switching windows takes several minutes and each window is
corrupted and non-responsive until the switch is complete. If I have
anything else, like Wordperfect or Bibleworks open, it's even worse. I
don't understand why this is so bad when there is 256M of RAM. My
system ought to run much faster. I got much better performance on a
Fujitsu laptop, with less memory and a slower motherboard chip. The
only other program I knowingly have running is McAfee for stopping
viruses and a toolbar for my ISP. That should not cause this big a
problem. I do seem to have other stuff running is I look at the list of
processes, but I'm not sure on XP which programs, which belong to owner,
are actually mine, needed by XP or are things I don't want or don't need
running, but none of them seems to be using massive amounts of RAM.
What could be wrong? Thanks.


Ken

[Ron Martell]

wrote:

> I have WIndows XP on a Pentium 4 system with 256M of RAM Yet, if I
>have Netscape 4.79 open, with, say, four windows and Windows Explorer
>running, the system acts like it is starved for memory. I have over 4G
>in free space on disk. I just raised my virtual memory 50 500M from
>384M. If I have, say, seven Netscape windows open, I get frequent times
>when just switching windows takes several minutes and each window is
>corrupted and non-responsive until the switch is complete. If I have
>anything else, like Wordperfect or Bibleworks open, it's even worse. I
>don't understand why this is so bad when there is 256M of RAM. My
>system ought to run much faster. I got much better performance on a
>Fujitsu laptop, with less memory and a slower motherboard chip. The
>only other program I knowingly have running is McAfee for stopping
>viruses and a toolbar for my ISP. That should not cause this big a
>problem. I do seem to have other stuff running is I look at the list of
>processes, but I'm not sure on XP which programs, which belong to owner,
>are actually mine, needed by XP or are things I don't want or don't need
>running, but none of them seems to be using massive amounts of RAM.
>What could be wrong? Thanks.
>
>
>Ken


Hi Ken.

McAfee is well known for have the "who dropped the anchor?" effect on
a computer so that could be part of the problem.

256 mb of RAM is not a lot by Windows XP standards and if you are
putting a fairly heavy load onto the system (which you seem to be
doing) then it will be using the paging file quite a bit. And that
does have an impact on performance, once the computer starts actually
moving active memory pages back and forth between RAM and the paging
file.

You can check on how much actual usage is being made of the paging
file with a utility you can download from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that shows actual paging file usage in the 50 mb range or higher
then there is a very high probability that adding more RAM will result
in improved performance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

[Alex Nichol]

wrote:

> I have WIndows XP on a Pentium 4 system with 256M of RAM Yet, if I
>have Netscape 4.79 open, with, say, four windows and Windows Explorer
>running, the system acts like it is starved for memory. I have over 4G
>in free space on disk. I just raised my virtual memory 50 500M from
>384M. If I have, say, seven Netscape windows open, I get frequent times
>when just switching windows takes several minutes and each window is
>corrupted and non-responsive until the switch is complete.

Programs like Netscape ask for very large allocations of virtual memory
space - which they probably then do not take up. Raise the Max (but not
Initial) size of the page file to maybe 1GB: or more - there is no
downside in having too much if you never get to use it. Read more at
www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

Initial I would start at 250 on a 256 Machine, and then the tool linked
from that page to see how much actually gets used.=20

--=20
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K.