memory figures shown in task manager

[Andy Fish]

Hi,

I have a PC with 1GB physical RAM. at the moment, my commit charge is 1470
mb.

I presume that this figure includes the 300mb that is reported under "system
cache" and maybe also includes the kernel memory which is 120 mb

if I add up all the "mem usage" values from the "processes" tab, it comes to
about 500 mb

so even adding up all of these, there is another 1/2 gb of commit charge
that I can't account for. the help is next to useless - can someone explain
to me quite what all this memory is allocated to? or even better, tell me
where microsoft wrote the answer down.

TIA

Andy

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a PC with 1GB physical RAM. at the moment, my commit charge is 1470
mb.

I presume that this figure includes the 300mb that is reported under "system
cache" and maybe also includes the kernel memory which is 120 mb

if I add up all the "mem usage" values from the "processes" tab, it comes to
about 500 mb

so even adding up all of these, there is another 1/2 gb of commit charge
that I can't account for. the help is next to useless - can someone explain
to me quite what all this memory is allocated to? or even better, tell me
where microsoft wrote the answer down.

TIA

Andy

The Microsoft article which will give the answers is:
"Performance Monitoring Tools",
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/reskit/03tools.mspx?mfr=true

Another, excellent article covering Virtual Memory in Windows XP by Alex
Nichol, in courtecy:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm


Regards,
Ka2H

 

[Gerry]

Andy

Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak? I have no
idea which figure you are quoting. Knowing the RAM installed you can get
an idea of the extent the system is using the pagefile at any given time
but the Task Manager tends to obscure this important question. It also
confuses many users who think figures quoted for individual programmes
are usage whereas they are allocations.

You can do a better check on pagefile usage using pagefilemon.

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 that 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.

--



Hope this helps.

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