Will more RAM solve my problem?

I have win10 Pro, fully updated except for the 1803 update scheduled for
this spring. I've tried a couple times and I get an error and it says
it will try later. The error changed the second time. But I'm 99% sure
the spring update wouldn't solve the problem that follows, would it?

I have a problem and I don't know if I'm the cause of it or not.

I very frequently get Not Responding in the title line. It used to be
mostly Firefox, but now it is often Eudora** (email) which has either
Not Responding or a slowly spinning blue circle (That's basically the
same thing, isn't it? When it shows this, the harddrive light is on or
maybe flashing, and I think it's saving the outbox, where I have been
making changes, but the Outbox right now is only 3 megabytes. yet it
takes 10 or 15 seconds for the Not Resp. or the spinning blue circle to
go away.

I think I have thrashing too, at other times.

I have 8 gigs of RAM, the most this box will hold. The basic question
is, If I got a new box with 16 gigs or 32? gigs (how big do they go?)
would that solve these problems?


I have tried to limit the number of FF tabs I have open, but it's
something like trying to lose weight. I see food, I want it. I think of
something and I open a tab to search on it and 3 tabs to discuss it. I
read them but not thoroughly enough to close them.

FTR, the authors changed FF a few years ago so that when it is closed
and reopened, it has markers for each earlier tab, but it doesn't load
one of them until I put the focus on it. I thought that would save me
but it's not enough. (I think for every FF window it loads the tab
that would have focus if the window had focus.)


**The Not Reponsding shows up on almost every program at one time or
another, even the box that wants to close a process (I think it means
windows but it doesn't say.) The program I routinely have open which
is most resistant to Not Resp is this one, Forte Agent. I'm using v1.9
but I don't think that makes much difference here.

On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:43:08 -0400, micky
wrote:


I have win10 Pro, fully updated except for the 1803 update scheduled for
this spring. I've tried a couple times and I get an error and it says
it will try later. The error changed the second time. But I'm 99% sure
the spring update wouldn't solve the problem that follows, would it?

I have a problem and I don't know if I'm the cause of it or not.

I very frequently get Not Responding in the title line. It used to be
mostly Firefox, but now it is often Eudora** (email) which has either
Not Responding or a slowly spinning blue circle (That's basically the
same thing, isn't it? When it shows this, the harddrive light is on or
maybe flashing, and I think it's saving the outbox, where I have been
making changes, but the Outbox right now is only 3 megabytes. yet it
takes 10 or 15 seconds for the Not Resp. or the spinning blue circle to
go away.

I think I have thrashing too, at other times.

I have 8 gigs of RAM, the most this box will hold. The basic question
is, If I got a new box with 16 gigs or 32? gigs (how big do they go?)
would that solve these problems?


I have tried to limit the number of FF tabs I have open, but it's
something like trying to lose weight. I see food, I want it. I think of
something and I open a tab to search on it and 3 tabs to discuss it. I
read them but not thoroughly enough to close them.

FTR, the authors changed FF a few years ago so that when it is closed
and reopened, it has markers for each earlier tab, but it doesn't load
one of them until I put the focus on it. I thought that would save me
but it's not enough. (I think for every FF window it loads the tab
that would have focus if the window had focus.)


**The Not Reponsding shows up on almost every program at one time or
another, even the box that wants to close a process (I think it means
windows but it doesn't say.) The program I routinely have open which
is most resistant to Not Resp is this one, Forte Agent. I'm using v1.9
but I don't think that makes much difference here.

Task Manager in Win 10 won't win any design or architecture awards, but
I'd start there. Launch it, select the Performance tab, and leave it
open.

Check the CPU status. Are one or more cores pegged at 100% utilization?

Check the RAM status. I'll be surprised if you're using much over about
4GB or so, but it's worth looking.

Check the drive status. If your hard drive (SSD or whatever) is at or
near 100% utilization, check the Average Response Time. When I've
intentionally stressed a system, I've the response time get up around
7-10 seconds! Normally, you'd want to see that value be single digit
milliseconds.

So I'd start with those things. Going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is usually
not the same bang for the buck that going from 512MB to 1GB was. RAM
could be your problem, but it seems unlikely. If I had to guess from the
symptom description, my first guess would be hard drive response time,
but you can easily see if that's the case.

Char Jackson wrote:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:43:08 -0400, micky
wrote:

I have win10 Pro, fully updated except for the 1803 update scheduled for
this spring. I've tried a couple times and I get an error and it says
it will try later. The error changed the second time. But I'm 99% sure
the spring update wouldn't solve the problem that follows, would it?

I have a problem and I don't know if I'm the cause of it or not.

I very frequently get Not Responding in the title line. It used to be
mostly Firefox, but now it is often Eudora** (email) which has either
Not Responding or a slowly spinning blue circle (That's basically the
same thing, isn't it? When it shows this, the harddrive light is on or
maybe flashing, and I think it's saving the outbox, where I have been
making changes, but the Outbox right now is only 3 megabytes. yet it
takes 10 or 15 seconds for the Not Resp. or the spinning blue circle to
go away.

I think I have thrashing too, at other times.

I have 8 gigs of RAM, the most this box will hold. The basic question
is, If I got a new box with 16 gigs or 32? gigs (how big do they go?)
would that solve these problems?


I have tried to limit the number of FF tabs I have open, but it's
something like trying to lose weight. I see food, I want it. I think of
something and I open a tab to search on it and 3 tabs to discuss it. I
read them but not thoroughly enough to close them.

FTR, the authors changed FF a few years ago so that when it is closed
and reopened, it has markers for each earlier tab, but it doesn't load
one of them until I put the focus on it. I thought that would save me
but it's not enough. (I think for every FF window it loads the tab
that would have focus if the window had focus.)


**The Not Reponsding shows up on almost every program at one time or
another, even the box that wants to close a process (I think it means
windows but it doesn't say.) The program I routinely have open which
is most resistant to Not Resp is this one, Forte Agent. I'm using v1.9
but I don't think that makes much difference here.

Task Manager in Win 10 won't win any design or architecture awards, but
I'd start there. Launch it, select the Performance tab, and leave it
open.

Check the CPU status. Are one or more cores pegged at 100% utilization?

Check the RAM status. I'll be surprised if you're using much over about
4GB or so, but it's worth looking.

Check the drive status. If your hard drive (SSD or whatever) is at or
near 100% utilization, check the Average Response Time. When I've
intentionally stressed a system, I've the response time get up around
7-10 seconds! Normally, you'd want to see that value be single digit
milliseconds.

So I'd start with those things. Going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is usually
not the same bang for the buck that going from 512MB to 1GB was. RAM
could be your problem, but it seems unlikely. If I had to guess from the
symptom description, my first guess would be hard drive response time,
but you can easily see if that's the case.


Windows 10 does not "use" RAM.

It "occupies" RAM.

The minimum the OS "needs" when under pressure is 350MB.
Using a memory pressure utility, test it out. It will purge
caches when put under pressure.

It will "occupy" 4 to 6GB of RAM, if the machine has 64GB total.
If you apply memory pressure (try to grab the RAM away),
the core of the OS drops to 350MB. It doesn't "need" 4GB,
but it will occupy that RAM with something. That's what
Task Manager will tell you.

If you experiment with initial conditions on Windows 10 using
a Virtual Machine, it will "run" in as little as 256MB of RAM.
There is sufficient room to open a copy of Notepad. The
Memory Compressor task (whatever that is), runs continuously
under those conditions. If the OS is given 1024MB of RAM
(the indicated "minimum"), the Compressor stops. There is
a continuum of CPU usage, between 256MB available versus
1024MB available. Compressor runs flat out on one core
at 256MB, and is just coming to a stop if it finds 1024MB
is available and nothing else is happening.

*******

In the OPs described set of circumstances, I see no reason
to blame the sticks of memory for this. The CPU could well
be railed by something, and opening Task Manager, setting
"graph per core" in the CPU pane, might indicate the
CPU is almost completely used up by useless activity.

I have that problem in virtual machines with Windows 10,
and have to cut the nuts off Windows 10 to regain control.
Not a pretty sight.

Obviously, no OS "gets better with time". They can only
get worse. Microsoft has no quality metric at all,
for what they produce. They couldn't give a rats
ass if it doesn't run well for you.

Using a power meter, and my laptop, if I plug in the
network connection, the power consumption immediately
*doubles*. That should give you some idea how much
trouble they're in. And no, it didn't double because
I was watching vids. It doubled... for maintenance tasks.

In some cases, if you boot a laptop and leave it
for two or three hours, the OS may get bored of doing
maintenance, and that's the time to start watching vids.
Note well though, that if a user starts to do something,
this also functions as a trigger for random maintenance
activity. I've run benchmark code before, left a copy
of ProcMon running, and see the OS "jump to life" when
a benchmark runs. Ruining my bench. They could not make
the OS more evil, if they tried.

If there's enough CPU cycles left to run Task Manager,
you can try to determine where all the horsepower went,
in there.

Paul

On 31/07/2019 10:43, micky wrote:
I have win10 Pro,

The two things that might solve your problem a

1) Visit your psychiatrist and explain to him/her your problem
succinctly and to the point;

2) Just buy a new machine from DELL and it will do everything you want
from it out of the box;

Anything else is a complete waste of time and money.

Hope this helps you.

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--
With over 999 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

In article ,
lid says...

On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:43:08 -0400, micky
wrote:


I have win10 Pro, fully updated except for the 1803 update scheduled for
this spring. I've tried a couple times and I get an error and it says
it will try later. The error changed the second time. But I'm 99% sure
the spring update wouldn't solve the problem that follows, would it?

I have a problem and I don't know if I'm the cause of it or not.

I very frequently get Not Responding in the title line. It used to be
mostly Firefox, but now it is often Eudora** (email) which has either
Not Responding or a slowly spinning blue circle (That's basically the
same thing, isn't it? When it shows this, the harddrive light is on or
maybe flashing, and I think it's saving the outbox, where I have been
making changes, but the Outbox right now is only 3 megabytes. yet it
takes 10 or 15 seconds for the Not Resp. or the spinning blue circle to
go away.

I think I have thrashing too, at other times.

I have 8 gigs of RAM, the most this box will hold. The basic question
is, If I got a new box with 16 gigs or 32? gigs (how big do they go?)
would that solve these problems?


I have tried to limit the number of FF tabs I have open, but it's
something like trying to lose weight. I see food, I want it. I think of
something and I open a tab to search on it and 3 tabs to discuss it. I
read them but not thoroughly enough to close them.

FTR, the authors changed FF a few years ago so that when it is closed
and reopened, it has markers for each earlier tab, but it doesn't load
one of them until I put the focus on it. I thought that would save me
but it's not enough. (I think for every FF window it loads the tab
that would have focus if the window had focus.)


**The Not Reponsding shows up on almost every program at one time or
another, even the box that wants to close a process (I think it means
windows but it doesn't say.) The program I routinely have open which
is most resistant to Not Resp is this one, Forte Agent. I'm using v1.9
but I don't think that makes much difference here.

Task Manager in Win 10 won't win any design or architecture awards, but
I'd start there. Launch it, select the Performance tab, and leave it
open.

Check the CPU status. Are one or more cores pegged at 100% utilization?

Check the RAM status. I'll be surprised if you're using much over about
4GB or so, but it's worth looking.

Check the drive status. If your hard drive (SSD or whatever) is at or
near 100% utilization, check the Average Response Time. When I've
intentionally stressed a system, I've the response time get up around
7-10 seconds! Normally, you'd want to see that value be single digit
milliseconds.

So I'd start with those things. Going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is usually
not the same bang for the buck that going from 512MB to 1GB was. RAM
could be your problem, but it seems unlikely. If I had to guess from the
symptom description, my first guess would be hard drive response time,
but you can easily see if that's the case.

A useful way of gauging whether your system is pinched for memory is to
download Sysinternals Process Explorer (now owned my MS):
http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe
http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.chm - for the man pages.

In Process Explorer, View, Memory-tab: compare "Commit Charge" (which
is the amount of memory requests overall the system) with Physical
Memory. If the former is appreciably more than the latter then memory
is your pinch-point.

Alternatives are that an app is waiting for a dozing server somewhere,
of course...

--

Phil, London

Your computer is an old piece of ****
and so are you. This is the problem.

Go to a nearby nursing home, and sniff dirty
geriatric diapers while you jerk off.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Wed, 31 Jul 2019 08:49:54 -0500, Char
Jackson wrote:

After using your advice, I've made a lot of progress on this Char, but I
haven't had time to write up the results. In short it was CPU because
of something I haven't identified in Firefox (not streaming.) I plan to
give a more detailed description.


On Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:43:08 -0400, micky
wrote:


I have win10 Pro, fully updated except for the 1803 update scheduled for
this spring. I've tried a couple times and I get an error and it says
it will try later. The error changed the second time. But I'm 99% sure
the spring update wouldn't solve the problem that follows, would it?

I have a problem and I don't know if I'm the cause of it or not.

I very frequently get Not Responding in the title line. It used to be
mostly Firefox, but now it is often Eudora** (email) which has either
Not Responding or a slowly spinning blue circle (That's basically the
same thing, isn't it? When it shows this, the harddrive light is on or
maybe flashing, and I think it's saving the outbox, where I have been
making changes, but the Outbox right now is only 3 megabytes. yet it
takes 10 or 15 seconds for the Not Resp. or the spinning blue circle to
go away.

I think I have thrashing too, at other times.

I have 8 gigs of RAM, the most this box will hold. The basic question
is, If I got a new box with 16 gigs or 32? gigs (how big do they go?)
would that solve these problems?


I have tried to limit the number of FF tabs I have open, but it's
something like trying to lose weight. I see food, I want it. I think of
something and I open a tab to search on it and 3 tabs to discuss it. I
read them but not thoroughly enough to close them.

FTR, the authors changed FF a few years ago so that when it is closed
and reopened, it has markers for each earlier tab, but it doesn't load
one of them until I put the focus on it. I thought that would save me
but it's not enough. (I think for every FF window it loads the tab
that would have focus if the window had focus.)


**The Not Reponsding shows up on almost every program at one time or
another, even the box that wants to close a process (I think it means
windows but it doesn't say.) The program I routinely have open which
is most resistant to Not Resp is this one, Forte Agent. I'm using v1.9
but I don't think that makes much difference here.

Task Manager in Win 10 won't win any design or architecture awards, but
I'd start there. Launch it, select the Performance tab, and leave it
open.

Check the CPU status. Are one or more cores pegged at 100% utilization?

Check the RAM status. I'll be surprised if you're using much over about
4GB or so, but it's worth looking.

Check the drive status. If your hard drive (SSD or whatever) is at or
near 100% utilization, check the Average Response Time. When I've
intentionally stressed a system, I've the response time get up around
7-10 seconds! Normally, you'd want to see that value be single digit
milliseconds.

So I'd start with those things. Going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is usually
not the same bang for the buck that going from 512MB to 1GB was. RAM
could be your problem, but it seems unlikely. If I had to guess from the
symptom description, my first guess would be hard drive response time,
but you can easily see if that's the case.