never enough virtual memory

[Guest]

My laptop (PIV, Windows XP, SP) has become exceedingly slow, with the hard
drive working too hard/often. I run adaware which helps. I don't show any
viruses. still, task manager shows that hte process "faxlog" is using by far
the most memory. I have searched the KB, these forums, and he web, but find
no information.

Is this my culprit?

 

[Brian Cryer]

My laptop (PIV, Windows XP, SP) has become exceedingly slow, with the hard
drive working too hard/often. I run adaware which helps. I don't show
any
viruses. still, task manager shows that hte process "faxlog" is using by
far
the most memory. I have searched the KB, these forums, and he web, but
find
no information.

Is this my culprit?

Just because one application is using more memory doesn't necessarily make
it the culprit.

How much physical RAM do you have and how much memory is being used in the
system?

You can get both these bits of information from task-manager:
Physical Memory - Total
and PF Usage

if the total memory usage (PF Usage) is significantly higher than your
physical memory, and the disk light is frequently on and task manager
doesn't show the cpu as 100% busy then its probably spending most of its
time swapping - which from your posting is what I think you suspect. If this
is the case then the obvious remedy would be to add more RAM. Alternately
you could try reducing the number of applications you have running.

If you found that adaware helped then try spybot
(http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html). Both AdAware and
SpyBot do a similar job, but each may spot problems that the other misses. I
feel its unlikely to be the cause, but if you think you may have a malware
problem then is it likely that you also have a virus problem? Is your
anti-virus up to date? (and are you running a firewall?)

Hope this helps,

Brian.

www.cryer.co.uk/brian

 

[Guest]

Thank you Brian.

I am not with the computer right now, but I will check my memory usage.
I'll also try spybot. I do scan for viruses often (but don't run it in the
background when I am not online)

I have plenty of ram (had? I guess a module could have gone bad), don't run
anitvirus in the background when I am not on line, don't game, frequently run
only one program (word or outlook) at a time.

 

[Ron Martell]

Just because one application is using more memory doesn't necessarily make
it the culprit.

How much physical RAM do you have and how much memory is being used in the
system?

You can get both these bits of information from task-manager:
Physical Memory - Total
and PF Usage

if the total memory usage (PF Usage) is significantly higher than your
physical memory, and the disk light is frequently on and task manager
doesn't show the cpu as 100% busy then its probably spending most of its
time swapping - which from your posting is what I think you suspect. If this
is the case then the obvious remedy would be to add more RAM. Alternately
you could try reducing the number of applications you have running.

PF Usage reported by task manager is not the total memory usage.

It is the amount of the paging file that Windows has mapped for usage.
It consists of two distinct components:
- Actual paging file usage, which is active memory content that has
been relocated from RAM to the paging file so as to allow that RAM to
be used for other, currently more important tasks.
- Phantom paging file usage, which is memory address space allocated
to the unused portions of memory allocation requests. All items -
application programs, Windows components, and device drivers - always
ask for memory allocations that are larger than what they need under
normal circumstances. By design Windows must identify memory address
space to satisfy all of the memory allocation requests that are
issued. Windows does this by only allocating RAM addresses to those
portions of the requests that are actually used, and by mapping the
unused portions to locations in the paging file. Note that this
mapping of unused portions requires no hard drive activity, unless the
total items mapped to the paging file exceed the current maximum
setting. All that is needed is notations in the memory mapping tables
maintained by the CPU. And if a previously unused portion of a
request is subsequently required to be used then at that time it can
be remapped to an available location in RAM.

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

 

[Guest]

Thanks. Your thoughtful reply to my simplistic question is much appreciated.
This information is most helpful in understanding what is at issue now and
in the future.