Help: Keeping Ram Free of Garbage

[Darren Harris]

I have Windows 98(SE) anmd Windows XP. I will be using my PC mostly
for internet and video editing, and will be experimenting with a
ramdisk.(I'll have a total of 512mb to work with).

So from what I can tell, the following are the only apps that I need
on start-up:
1) ScanRegistry
2) TaskMonitor
3) SystemTray
4) LoadPowerProfile
5) Anti-Virus Program

I guess it is best to try to work my way up from there, using
"Blackviper" to figure out what is what.

And I should be able to whittle my sytem down to this using
"MSCONFIG". And I'm assuming that this is better than "startup.cpl"
because nothing extra will be running in the background.

I've read previous advice about staying away from ram-freeing apps,
but there is a lot of contradicting info on this.

Thanks for all the advice.

Darren

 

[philo]

I have Windows 98(SE) anmd Windows XP. I will be using my PC mostly
for internet and video editing, and will be experimenting with a
ramdisk.(I'll have a total of 512mb to work with).

So from what I can tell, the following are the only apps that I need
on start-up:
1) ScanRegistry
2) TaskMonitor
3) SystemTray
4) LoadPowerProfile
5) Anti-Virus Program

I guess it is best to try to work my way up from there, using
"Blackviper" to figure out what is what.

And I should be able to whittle my sytem down to this using
"MSCONFIG". And I'm assuming that this is better than "startup.cpl"
because nothing extra will be running in the background.

I've read previous advice about staying away from ram-freeing apps,
but there is a lot of contradicting info on this.

Thanks for all the advice.

Darren

a ram disk won't be of any help

but there is a free utility called cacheman which might possibly help a
little bit with win98...especially of you go over 512 megs of RAM

 

[kony]

I have Windows 98(SE) anmd Windows XP. I will be using my PC mostly
for internet and video editing, and will be experimenting with a
ramdisk.(I'll have a total of 512mb to work with).

So from what I can tell, the following are the only apps that I need
on start-up:
1) ScanRegistry

Not needed, but good nevertheless.

2) TaskMonitor

Not needed. Run each application a few times, or perhaps
wait a few days to build up a list (automated, not YOU
building a list) then disable Task Monitor.

3) SystemTray

Can also be disabled, but IIRC, will load anyway.

4) LoadPowerProfile
Disable

5) Anti-Virus Program

Your call, video editing might be faster with it temporarily
disabled.

I guess it is best to try to work my way up from there, using
"Blackviper" to figure out what is what.

It seems you're mostly focusing on Win98 at the moment.
Ideally you'd use WinXP or 2K for video editing, since NTFS
supports files > 2GB... then again some people edit videos
differently than others, but it's not hard at all to end up
with > 2GB worth of video that "might" be a single file if
it "could" be a single file.

And I should be able to whittle my sytem down to this using
"MSCONFIG". And I'm assuming that this is better than "startup.cpl"
because nothing extra will be running in the background.

Generally MSCONFIG is suggested only for temporarily
disabling things in WinXP. The "services.msc" method is
best to trim down WinXP. IIRC, Blackviper amoung many other
'sites on the 'net have descriptions of services you might
disable in XP.

I've read previous advice about staying away from ram-freeing apps,
but there is a lot of contradicting info on this.

Yes, stay away from them. Free ram is wasted ram. Your
system will use free ram to cache files, and flushing that
only cause files to be reloaded from HDD later. On the
other hand, the OS will flush cache if the memory is needed,
with no help from any 3rd party app needed.

Ramdisks are not of much benefit for video editing on a box
with only 512MB. For a temporary internet file cache, it
may help, but if the ramdisk uses a fixed allocation instead
of being dynamic (releasing memory when ramdisk's emptied)
you might want to note the Peak Commit Charge in Task
Manager (winXP) to determine if your ramdisk is causing
excessive paging to HDD, a situation it would be better to
avoid.

Ideally the system would have more memory added, it's quite
easy to benefit from more than 512MB when video editing,
especially if you want use a ramdisk too.

 

[Jon Danniken]

5) Anti-Virus Program

I have a firewall running (Zone Alarm), but I don't let any AV software run in the
background on my machine. I do have AV software installed, but I only invoke it when
I have a new file that I want to run; then I update the AV software and check it.
Leaving it running in the background just takes up too many resources for my taste.

Jon

 

[JS]

(e-mail address removed)2.com (Darren Harris) wrote in

I have Windows 98(SE) anmd Windows XP. I will be using my PC mostly
for internet and video editing, and will be experimenting with a
ramdisk.(I'll have a total of 512mb to work with).

So from what I can tell, the following are the only apps that I need
on start-up:
1) ScanRegistry
2) TaskMonitor
3) SystemTray
4) LoadPowerProfile
5) Anti-Virus Program

I guess it is best to try to work my way up from there, using
"Blackviper" to figure out what is what.

And I should be able to whittle my sytem down to this using
"MSCONFIG". And I'm assuming that this is better than "startup.cpl"
because nothing extra will be running in the background.

I've read previous advice about staying away from ram-freeing apps,
but there is a lot of contradicting info on this.

Thanks for all the advice.

Darren

There are some good tools at http://www.sysinternals.com/

 

[JS]

Also check:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm

for info about stuff that runs at startup.

 

[Darren Harris]

Thanks everyone.

I have my work cut out for me.

I just picked up a motherboard that supports three 512mb chips.
Hopefully that'll be enough for what I want to do.

Thanks a lot.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.