"Kenster" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>I have a brand new Toshiba Satellite A85-S107. 40 gig harddrive. 1.4
>GHz processor. 256 megs ram.
>A system check using MSinfo32 indicates that I only have 16 megs of
>available physical memory and only about half of the 512 mb virtual
>memory available. The shared video card takes the RAM down to 191
>megs. Even when I disable every single file under Startup (msconfig)
>it only raises the available memory to about 26 mb. So, with virtually
>nothing running I have about a 75 percent memory load. Can this
>possibly all be attributed to Windows XP?
>I realize there are other processes running in the background but I am
>not sure how and what to do about them. And virtualy all of them seems
>to be windows files. Should I just add another 256 mb of ram and not
>worry about it?
>Comments and suggests would be apprecaited.
>Thanks,
>Ken
>(E-Mail Removed)
Windows will always attempt to find some use, anything whatever that
might potentially be of some benefit rather than just leaving the RAM
sitting there idly going to rot. "Available physical memory" should
perhaps be renamed "Useless physical memory" because that is what it
actually represents - memory for which Windows has so far been unable
to find any use for.
Adding more memory can noticeably improve performance only if the
added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not currently being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.
Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.
There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/
If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.
This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.
Hope this explains the situation.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm
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