Windows XP Pro Memory problems

[Chris.Coops]

This one has me totally stumped.
I'm sure someone can shed some light on it for me please.

I have a laptop with 512MB RAM and 40GB HDD. When a user logs onto it,
it runs extremely slowly with the HDD activity light almost constantly
flashing, and it stays that way for about 20-30 minutes after logon,
making the computer completely unusable. When minimising a window the
screen display takes about 40 seconds to refresh and any new window
takes forever to load.

This morning when looking at the isse the only program the user had
open was Outlook.
I looked through task manager and saw that out of the 500+MB of RAM
only abour 30K was available, and the reason for the HDD activity was
that the pagefile was being used.
Looking down the list of running processes, there were 54 running
processes, of which about the top 6 culprits were using about 250MB of
memory. The main one was Outlook.exe running at about 70MB (normal),
svchost.exe running at 60MB, wuaulct.exe running at 28MB, and
mcshield.exe running at 22MB, Google desktop running at 25MB and BBC
alerts running at about 20MB.
The rest of the running processes were less than 5MB, most below 1MB,
but obviously all these processes were adding up to more than the
total RAM available, hence pagefile being used.

Obviously, the more RAM available the RAM programs will use, but why
was Windows handling it so badly!?
I've never seen memory problems this bad on Windows XP before, looking
around at other 512MB computers, most still have approximately 100MB
of free RAM available even with the same processes running, and when I
removed some non-important processes from the problem laptop I managed
to get this to a reasonable amount and the speed of the computer
increased enormously.

I guess my question is, how can I help Windows control the amount of
memory programs required? I don't see that more than 512MB is a
"requirement" for Windows XP and the software we are running,
otherwise I would see the same problem on other computers.
Or is there anything else I can look at that might help me find the
root of this problem?

Thanks

 

[Gerry]

Chris

In Task Manager you're looking at allocations of virtual memory not
usage.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

How large is your hard disk and how much free space.

Use page file monitor to observe what is the peak usage. Start it to run
immediately after start-up and look at the log. Pagefilemon takes
snapshots. You need to run it at the beginning of the session at then
run it again at intervals throughout the sessions. The log is Pagefile
log.txt. If you right click on the file in Windows Explorer and select
Send to, Desktop (Create Shortcut). The same applies to
XP_PageFileMon.exe.

A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Note programs using undo features, particularly those associated with
graphics and photo editing, require large amounts of memory so if you
use this type of programme check these first observing how the page
usage increases when they start and whether the usage decreases when you
close the programme.

What is the CPU usage in Task Manager during this problem period?

What Error / Warning reports ( if any ) appear in the System /
Application logs in Event Viewer when you last booted the machine?

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in
the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also appear in
a previous boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

This one has me totally stumped.
I'm sure someone can shed some light on it for me please.

I have a laptop with 512MB RAM and 40GB HDD. When a user logs onto it,
it runs extremely slowly with the HDD activity light almost constantly
flashing, and it stays that way for about 20-30 minutes after logon,
making the computer completely unusable. When minimising a window the
screen display takes about 40 seconds to refresh and any new window
takes forever to load.

This morning when looking at the isse the only program the user had
open was Outlook.
I looked through task manager and saw that out of the 500+MB of RAM
only abour 30K was available,

That's good, not bad. Wanting to minimize the amount of memory Windows
uses is a counterproductive desire. Windows is designed to use all, or
nearly all, of your memory, all the time, and that's good not bad. If
your apps don't need it, it will be used for caching, and then given
back to the apps when they need it again. Free memory is wasted
memory. You paid for it all and shouldn't want to see any of it
wasted.

and the reason for the HDD activity was
that the pagefile was being used.

Probably not.

Looking down the list of running processes, there were 54 running
processes, of which about the top 6 culprits were using about 250MB of
memory. The main one was Outlook.exe running at about 70MB (normal),
svchost.exe running at 60MB, wuaulct.exe running at 28MB, and
mcshield.exe running at 22MB, Google desktop running at 25MB and BBC
alerts running at about 20MB.
The rest of the running processes were less than 5MB, most below 1MB,
but obviously all these processes were adding up to more than the
total RAM available, hence pagefile being used.

You are mixing up page file allocation with page file use (not your
fault; Windows reports it badly). Windows pre-allocates space in the
page file without actually using it, in advance of its possibly
needing it. This speeds up actual use if the need occurs later.

Obviously, the more RAM available the RAM programs will use, but why
was Windows handling it so badly!?
I've never seen memory problems this bad on Windows XP before, looking
around at other 512MB computers, most still have approximately 100MB
of free RAM available even with the same processes running, and when I
removed some non-important processes from the problem laptop I managed
to get this to a reasonable amount and the speed of the computer
increased enormously.

I guess my question is, how can I help Windows control the amount of
memory programs required? I don't see that more than 512MB is a
"requirement" for Windows XP and the software we are running,
otherwise I would see the same problem on other computers.
Or is there anything else I can look at that might help me find the
root of this problem?

You are looking at the wrong "problem." This is not a problem and not
what's causing the slowdown you are experiencing. There are many
possible reasons for a slowdown, but among the most common these days
is spyware infestation. I recommend that you begin troubleshooting by
going to MVP Malke's malware removal site at
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware and
following the instructions there.

 

[DL]

And could not McAfee not be a problem on the specific PC?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

And could not McAfee not be a problem on the specific PC?

McAfee could always be a problem, but these symptoms don't sound like
McAfee to me.