Physical Memory

[JohnD]

System information on my XP PC tells me I have total physical memory of
1,024.00 MB, and Available physical memory of 491.98 MB. Does this sound
right? Why the discrepancy?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

System information on my XP PC tells me I have total physical memory of
1,024.00 MB, and Available physical memory of 491.98 MB. Does this sound
right? Why the discrepancy?

What discrepancy? Naturally, if your computer is powered on, some of
its memory will be in use, and therefore not "available."


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Daave]

System information on my XP PC tells me I have total physical memory
of
1,024.00 MB, and Available physical memory of 491.98 MB. Does this
sound
right? Why the discrepancy?

All this means is you are currently using 532.02 MB of RAM.

 

[db.·.. >]

the helpful response
would be for the o.p.
to add up the consumption
used by the processes
running in memory.

but what would a troll
like you know, except
being a smart-as*

 

[JohnD]

Thank you, Bruce. I can understand the concept that if the computer is
powered on it must be running some stuff and thus using some memory. It just
seemed to me that for a computer that is ostensibly at rest - not running any
applications that I have started - to be using a half gig of memory, seemed
to me to be excessive. But perhaps it's not.

 

[JohnD]

Thanks for your response. Perhaps you might read my response to Bruce.

 

[JohnD]

Thanks for your reply, Daave. Perhaps you might read my response to Bruce.

 

[Daave]

Open up Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del). Although you may not have any
applications running in the Applications tab, click on the Processes
tab. Do you see any programs using memory now?

XP itself requires memory. Then all those other processes require
memory, too. Memory tends to be reserved so that a program will pick up
again at the drop of a hat.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Thank you, Bruce. I can understand the concept that if the computer is
powered on it must be running some stuff and thus using some memory. It just
seemed to me that for a computer that is ostensibly at rest - not running any
applications that I have started - to be using a half gig of memory, seemed
to me to be excessive. But perhaps it's not.

No, it's not excessive. By design, Windows uses as much of the
physical memory as it can to provide optimum performance. If and when
memory is needed for use by an application, Windows will release the
necessary amount. Remember: Unused RAM is wasted RAM.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[db.·.. >]

oh, pleaze...

what a crock. by
your estimate, every
one with 512 megs
or less couldn't run
windows.

 

[db.·.. >]

yeah, i read his response.

he has an answer for
everything but doesn't
provide any with value.

that's why he likes to
spew on my postings.
-------------------

my suggestion is to figure
out what is using your memory
so that you can be exactly
sure.

one method is to unload
unused processes, like
with this little utility:

http://www.amsn.ro/

------------------

afterwards, the amount of
the processes that are left
in memory, plus the amount
of video should add up nicely.

also, there is a utility at
microsoft.com called
"process explorer" that
can provide additional
details.

 

[John John (MVP)]

Did you read the Privacy Policy of that crap that you recommend and do
you know which country it comes from? Apparently, from some of your
posts in other groups, that is a very important thing for you,
especially the country of origin. You now seem to have two sets of
standards to fit whichever ill suggestion you want to make, will you
give consistence to your "suspectware" and spyware determination methods
and use the same standard for that useless crap that you are now peddling?

John

 

[John John (MVP)]

Don't listen to that db character and don't use that crap that he
recommends. Memory optimizers/defragers are nothing more than snake
oil, they provide absolutely no useful benefit to the memory management
of your Windows installation, quite to the contrary they create havoc
and force disk paging in order to create an illusion that they have
freed memory!

These optimizers work by making demands on the Windows Memory Manager
for a rapidly and steeply increasing amount of memory to the point where
the Windows Memory Manager pushes all the pageable code and data to the
pagefile to satisfy the demand. Once the code and data for all the
other applications (the Working Sets) has been paged out the snake oil
program then tells the Windows Memory Manager that it no longer needs
the memory that it asked for and it releases it, this creates an
illusion that memory has appeared out of nowheres.

The only problem with that is that all the other applications and
pageable system processes are now in the pagefile and that anything that
you do that needs the paged out code and data takes an eternity to run
because it has to get it from the pagefile, in many instances some
applications will simply crash! Things like using your web browser's
"Back" button to go to a previous page or reopening a Word document that
you had open only 30 seconds ago will now take forever! Even certain
Windows functions will lag and be sluggish.

The funny thing about all of this nonsense is that the snake oil memory
optimizer cannot do anything on its own, like all other applications and
processes it cannot manage memory at all, the Windows Memory Manager
does *absolutely* not permit this, all that the rogue application can do
is ask the Windows Memory Manager for RAM and then close the process
demanding the RAM or have the process "unallocate" the RAM. Yet even
more of a silly thing is that if you open an application, like lets say
Word, it will ask for a certain amount of RAM and the Windows Memory
Manager will comply, just as it did for the snake oil, and if needed it
will page out code and data just as it did for the snake oil. Once your
Word program is up and running if you want to open documents the same
thing happens all over again. The difference is that the Windows Memory
Manager will do this in a measured orderly manner as demanded by the
properly designed application instead of in a completely reckless manner
as demanded from a rogue snake oil program!

John

 

[Jim]

Thanks for your reply, Daave. Perhaps you might read my response to
Bruce.

I read your response to Bruce, and you are wrong. The processes that have
allocated RAM are memory resident because they must be ready to take action
when needed. They do so because otherwise entirely too much time would be
spent in loading and unloading processes.

Jim

 

[JohnD]

Yes, you are right. There are zillions of processes running. And this leads
to the question, "What are all these processes?" I seem to have heard that
processes get installed on your computer without your knowledge - from the
Internet, I guess - and they are serving their own purposes and not yours.
Is there any way to tell which are the necessary ones and get rid of the rest?

Like I look at my startup file from time to time and disable things I don't
recognize or do recognize but don't think I need. Next time I look, half of
them are back as new entries! Plus a bunch of new ones.

 

[JohnD]

Not to walk over Daave, but in his reply to me he mentioned that there would
be processes running in the background. I have replied to him that there are
zillions of them. It seems to me that your explanation to me must apply to
these processes, because after all they are also programs.

So the question that comes to my mind is whether these processes are all
necesesary. Is it possible that some might be associated with applications I
no longer have? Or that they have been installed without my knowledge off the
Internet? Is there a way I can find out and get rid of the unnecessary ones?

I thhought db was suggesting ways I could do this, but apparently what he
was suggesting was going to do something else.

Certainly my computer has become much slower than it used to be. I have a
3.0 gig Pentium 4 processor and apparently a half gig of available memory,
but it takes forever to load Microsoft Word, say, or AOL.

 

[Daave]

Yes, you are right. There are zillions of processes running. And
this leads
to the question, "What are all these processes?" I seem to have heard
that
processes get installed on your computer without your knowledge - from
the
Internet, I guess - and they are serving their own purposes and not
yours.
Is there any way to tell which are the necessary ones and get rid of
the rest?

Like I look at my startup file from time to time and disable things I
don't
recognize or do recognize but don't think I need. Next time I look,
half of
them are back as new entries! Plus a bunch of new ones.

These sites should have your answers:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

 

[Daave]

Certainly my computer has become much slower than it used to be. I
have a
3.0 gig Pentium 4 processor and apparently a half gig of available
memory,
but it takes forever to load Microsoft Word, say, or AOL.

Here are the most common causes for PC slowness:

1. Malicious software (malware)

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up.

3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[John John (MVP)]

Let's have a look at these zillions of processes. At a Command Prompt
issue the following commands, pressing enter after each:

net start >C:\Startlist.txt
tasklist /svc >>C:\Startlist.txt

Note the single redirector ">" in the first command and the double one
">>" in the second command. After you run the commands find and paste
the contents of the Startlist.txt file to your next post so we can have
a quick look at your running processes.

Windows XP Home doesn't include the Tasklist.exe utility, I can't figure
out why Microsoft excludes this utility from the Home Edition, but you
can download a copy of it here:
http://www.computerhope.com/download/winxp.htm

In addition to the sites that Daave gave you you might also find the
following to be useful:

Services Guide for Windows XP
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm

Windows XP x86 (32-bit) Service Pack 3 Service Configurations
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

John

 

[db.·.. >]

people always have
an opinion, but never
provide any solutions.

there is nothing wrong
with utilizing that utility
i mentioned to you.

when there can be no
logical rationalization, then
they will always use references
like snake oil, great plague, etc.-
anything to manipulate
people.

so his rationalization of
the utility is fictional.

because the results it
produces is verifiable by
windows.
-------------

to answer your question
about which processes
are necessary,

the utility i mentioned will
simply unload any orphaned
processes, leaving only
those that are actually being
used by the system.

if you want to eliminate
some of the running processes
in normal mode, you
can click on start>run>
msconfig.

in msconfig you can
disable all your startups
listed in the startup tab,

and you can disable all
the non microsoft services
listed under the services
tab and checking the box
"hide microsoft services"

--------------

another way to identify the
extra processes that
windows does not need
is to boot into safemode
and compare those processes
with the ones that run in
normal mode.