RAM & Browser revisited

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Thank you all for your advice and for persuading me to upgrade.

Paul, as you suggested, I got the RAM from Crucial.




--
You know it's time to clean the refrigerator
when something closes the door from the inside.

KenK wrote:
Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Thank you all for your advice and for persuading me to upgrade.

Paul, as you suggested, I got the RAM from Crucial.

I wish all problems were this easy :-)

*******

I've got a machine with plenty of RAM in it,
and it's not in a rush to finish anything :-)

The job the machine is doing, writes data at 1MB/sec
and the program tells me it has 2400000 MB of data to
write. (Even though it started with about 7000 MB
of data.) So it may finish 28 days from now. And the
CPU isn't maxed out. No idea what the program
is actually doing, to waste the resources.

I turned on NTFS compression in the folder it is
working on, so it won't run out of disk.

The reason I'm even running it, is to see if the
program can actually finish what it set out to do.

Paul

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

I tried pushing the simms in farther, but that didn't work, so later
I'll take the simms out and put them back in again.

Is there a way to know which one isn't registering. I have memtest, for
example. Will it tell me?

Thank you all for your advice and for persuading me to upgrade.

Paul, as you suggested, I got the RAM from Crucial.

KenK wrote:
Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Thank you all for your advice and for persuading me to upgrade.

Paul, as you suggested, I got the RAM from Crucial.

I think the first GB is what did it. I've got 2GB on this computer, but
didn't see much difference over the previous 1GB, in practice. But again,
that probably depends on how many apps you're running and/or how memory
intensive each app is. (But I think 500 MB of RAM is indeed a bit on the
light side. :-)

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:21:58
-0400, micky wrote:

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

I tried pushing the simms in farther, but that didn't work, so later
I'll take the simms out and put them back in again.

I also noticed just now that the harddrive light was flashing even
though I wasn't doing anything. Checkeing the task manager I saw that
MsMpEng.exe was running a lot. I'd never heard of that before but it
turned out to be the Windows Defender scanner, or something from that
program. I thought I got rid of that.

It has no icon i the systray like it used to. And the task manager in
the programs tab did't show it running. What's going on?????

But I found it in All Programs and started the interface and turned off
the scanning and the 2AM scan. I'm often up trying to use the computer
then.

Did I mention I Have AVG too?

-----

Separately I looked in msinfo and there were 8 new programs in the
startup page, all of them related to new all-in-one printer I installed.
I looked in the software and couldnt' find any way to turn any of them
off, so I just unchecked them in msinfo. Good enough? I figure
they will start when I need them. Am I right?

Is there a way to know which one isn't registering. I have memtest, for
example. Will it tell me?

In message , micky
writes:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Yes, can be amazing!

Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

Are you sure 4G once registered? AIUI, XP - at least, 32 bit - can't use
quite 4G; it can only _address_ 4G, but some of that is occupied by
hardware, so you can only access about 3.5G (or on some systems, 2G).
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

She's showing her age a little bit. I always say she doesn't have teething
troubles, she has denture troubles! - Timothy West (on their narrowboat!), RT
2014-March

micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

I tried pushing the simms in farther, but that didn't work, so later
I'll take the simms out and put them back in again.

Is there a way to know which one isn't registering. I have memtest, for
example. Will it tell me?

Thank you all for your advice and for persuading me to upgrade.

Paul, as you suggested, I got the RAM from Crucial.


1) The memory license is interpreted as an "address range license".
The address cannot go over 4GB as a physical address.

2) The BIOS plans the memory layout.

3) The BIOS stops the mapping of RAM to addresses, using
a five-bit upper address limit. That means it can select
a size for the memory range with 128MB accuracy.

4) It allocates PCI and AGP and PCI Express bus addresses
below 4GB. It allocates a minimum of 256MB, even if only
one byte for a register is needed. If a bus is not populated
at all (no device on that bus), the BIOS does not plan for it.
Since the BIOS "sees" all the hardware at powerup, it can
allocate the space needed. Selecting "PNP OS = No" in the
BIOS, provides the justification the BIOS needs for doing
this planning. If you select "PNP OS = Yes", then the OS
can do some portion of this planning. But I've never
tested that option.

5) Now, if you've followed this dribble so far, you can see
that "stuff is nibbling away" at the area near 4GB. And if
your chipset supports "memory hoisting", it does no good,
because of the Microsoft insistence that the memory license
be interpreted as an address license. They could have allowed
addresses to use PAE, and traverse above 4GB, but no, it
does not work that way. The license does not allow, say,
5GB of addresses and 4GB of RAM. It's "whatever you can manage
to do, within a 4GB address range".

6) If your video card has 512MB of memory on it, addresses
are needed to access it. These nibble away at your
address space. So if you had one PCI Express register,
that takes 256MB. If the card has 512MB of video RAM,
then the addresses needed would cover 512MB as well,
reducing system RAM that can be seen and used.

The end result is, if you install 4GB of DIMMs, with the right
hardware, you're down to 3GB mapped, just like that. And if
you install two NVidia cards in SLI, with 512MB of memory
on each card, before you know it, Windows reports only
2.75GB of system memory is available. In fact, if you were
to install one of the really modern video cards, one with
4GB or 6GB of video RAM on it, WinXP would not be able
to boot at all :-) Clever, what ?

*******

Your memory is registering just fine.

Welcome to Windows.

Paul

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 23:29:22
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , micky
writes:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system

Yes, can be amazing!

Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

Are you sure 4G once registered?

99.95% sure.

AIUI, XP - at least, 32 bit - can't use
quite 4G; it can only _address_ 4G, but some of that is occupied by

Yes, that's my understanding too, but I'm just reporting what it says on
the General Tab of Properties for My Computer. I'm 99% sure that says
4G if you have 4G even though windows dpes have limits on what it uses.

hardware, so you can only access about 3.5G (or on some systems, 2G).
[]

micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:21:58
-0400, micky wrote:

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system
Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

I tried pushing the simms in farther, but that didn't work, so later
I'll take the simms out and put them back in again.

I also noticed just now that the harddrive light was flashing even
though I wasn't doing anything. Checkeing the task manager I saw that
MsMpEng.exe was running a lot. I'd never heard of that before but it
turned out to be the Windows Defender scanner, or something from that
program. I thought I got rid of that.

It has no icon i the systray like it used to. And the task manager in
the programs tab did't show it running. What's going on?????

But I found it in All Programs and started the interface and turned off
the scanning and the 2AM scan. I'm often up trying to use the computer
then.

Did I mention I Have AVG too?

-----

Separately I looked in msinfo and there were 8 new programs in the
startup page, all of them related to new all-in-one printer I installed.
I looked in the software and couldnt' find any way to turn any of them
off, so I just unchecked them in msinfo. Good enough? I figure
they will start when I need them. Am I right?
Is there a way to know which one isn't registering. I have memtest, for
example. Will it tell me?


The things you disabled might stay off.

Printer software is not like malware - it doesn't
necessarily have multiple means to put back the
stuff that users turn off :-)

*******

You can use CPU-Z to verify the contents of
the DIMM slots. The "memory" tab shows
the detected RAM. (Whereas the System control
panel shows the usable RAM, as does Task Manager
in its own way.) Windows doesn't generally like
to admit to the physical configuration that is present.

http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/cpu-z_1.73-en.zip

Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
6) If your video card has 512MB of memory on it, addresses
are needed to access it. These nibble away at your
[]
you install two NVidia cards in SLI, with 512MB of memory
on each card, before you know it, Windows reports only
2.75GB of system memory is available. In fact, if you were
to install one of the really modern video cards, one with
4GB or 6GB of video RAM on it, WinXP would not be able
to boot at all :-) Clever, what ?
[]
I'm sure you are right, but it didn't have to be so; I always understood
that video RAM was to be used (and thus addressed) by the processor on
the video card, and didn't have to be _all_ individually addressable by
the main processor. Pity that isn't the case.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

so that the vendors can "serve you better". As if you were a tennis ball, I
guess. - Wolf K, in alt.windows7.general, 2014-7-21

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
You can use CPU-Z to verify the contents of
the DIMM slots. The "memory" tab shows
[]
Belarc Advisor too.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

so that the vendors can "serve you better". As if you were a tennis ball, I
guess. - Wolf K, in alt.windows7.general, 2014-7-21

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 22:37:04
-0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:21:58
-0400, micky wrote:

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on 18 Aug 2015 16:46:08 GMT, KenK
wrote:

Last Saturday I finally upgraded the XP RAM from 500M to 2G.

No more Firefox browser complaints. No more slow computer complaints. A
vast improvement in performance. Like a new system
Congratulations.

Coincidentally, last Saturday I noticed that only 3G of my 4G are still
registering. I wonder when that started, and if it's the cause of
some of my problems.

I tried pushing the simms in farther, but that didn't work, so later
I'll take the simms out and put them back in again.

I also noticed just now that the harddrive light was flashing even
though I wasn't doing anything. Checkeing the task manager I saw that
MsMpEng.exe was running a lot. I'd never heard of that before but it
turned out to be the Windows Defender scanner, or something from that
program. I thought I got rid of that.

It has no icon i the systray like it used to. And the task manager in
the programs tab did't show it running. What's going on?????

But I found it in All Programs and started the interface and turned off
the scanning and the 2AM scan. I'm often up trying to use the computer
then.

Did I mention I Have AVG too?

-----

Separately I looked in msinfo and there were 8 new programs in the
startup page, all of them related to new all-in-one printer I installed.
I looked in the software and couldnt' find any way to turn any of them
off, so I just unchecked them in msinfo. Good enough? I figure
they will start when I need them. Am I right?
Is there a way to know which one isn't registering. I have memtest, for
example. Will it tell me?


The things you disabled might stay off.

Restarted just now, after a couple hours of use, and they're still
unchecked. Later I'll look at what's actually running.

Printer software is not like malware - it doesn't
necessarily have multiple means to put back the
stuff that users turn off :-)

*******

You can use CPU-Z to verify the contents of
the DIMM slots. The "memory" tab shows
the detected RAM. (Whereas the System control
panel shows the usable RAM, as does Task Manager
in its own way.) Windows doesn't generally like
to admit to the physical configuration that is present.

http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/cpu-z_1.73-en.zip

Great. Downloading it next.

Thanks, Paul.

Paul

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Wed, 19 Aug 2015 07:23:59
+0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
You can use CPU-Z to verify the contents of
the DIMM slots. The "memory" tab shows
[]
Belarc Advisor too.

Hey, I have that already!

I should run that once in a while.

And it turns out, it shows each SIMIM but cpu-z only shows the total.

And it turns out, I only have 512 in two of the slots! So I only have
3Gig and that's all I ever had in this one!

Thanks. You've saved me the trouble and possible problems of removing
each simm and putting it in again.

I guess when I got the box it had 1 gig and I added 2. Another small
reason to upgrade the computer.


BTW, this belongs in another thread, but I still can't boot without the
Hiren's CD. I found a webpage for Dell saying three ways to reset the
BIOS, as advised here,= and I've done the first and third and nothing
changed.

**The first was just an F key while in the BIOS, and that worked because
it changed the booting order of two things, but it didnt' start better.

So then they had something about jumpers, but the diagram for my mobo
didn't show the right jumper.

So the third method, which it said reset more than the jumper method,
was to unplug the cord, remove the battery, hold the on button in for at
least 10 seconds to zero out the voltage there, and I did that and it
forgot the date and time so it must have worked. But it boots no
better. Another small reason to get a newer computer. I actually
have one already. I just have to set aside time to move everything to
it.