Slow Memory Release

  • Thread starter Thread starter HotRod
  • Start date Start date
H

HotRod

I have an XP pro machine that takes forever to release memory. I have
several applications that when they need over 100 MB seem to hang the
system, when I open task manager I can literally watch the memory count
slowly back down to zero. Is there anyway to solve this problem.
 
Frist, how much RAM do you have installed in your PC? XP Pro can handle 4GB
of RAM max.
 
What memory count are you watching decrement to Zero ?
Which applications ? How much physical memory does your
system have available to it ?

Your issue(s) may be more related to the applications than
the OS. XP's memory management handles almost every kind
of loading very well. As far as I know, there is only a single
tweak that modifies relinquishing memory after the program.
It's a memory management key AlwaysUnloadDLL - but I
doubt that it would resolve your issue.
 
You don't actually know a tweak as it only applies to windows earlier than 2000 - NT4, Win95 and 98. And it only applied to explorer.

Unloading the DLL
The Shell automatically unloads a DLL when its usage count is zero, but only after the DLL has not been used for a period of time. This inactive period might be unacceptably long at times, especially when a Shell extension DLL is being debugged. For operating systems prior to Windows 2000, you can shorten the inactive period by adding the following information to the registry.


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Software
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Explorer
 
The memory I am seeing slowly count down is in the TASK MANAGER -
PROCESSES - Mem Usage

The two applications that have been giving me problems are visual basic 6.0
in debug mode (Hooked into MapPoint) when I stop a running debug and Adobe
Acrobat when I open large pdf files. Both seem to bring the system to a
crawl and I need to use the Task Manager to end the process tree.

My current system has 512 MB RAM but most of the applications causing the
problems are releasing 100-200 MB
 
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