Too little RAM- but it should not be so?

[Richard]

I'm running XP professional on a Pentium II at 350Mhz. I've got 160Mb of
RAM, and I've never had a problem with Windows XP.

I've *not* recently installed an application, but now it appears 160Mb of
RAM is insufficient. Of course, I download the windows updates.

Windows used to load in about 6 minutes, now it takes about 20. During
startup I get:

"Virtual memory too low. Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is
increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. During this process
memory requests for applications may be denied."


Okay, right after startup, with no applications running, I get these figures
from Task Manager:

Totals Physical Memory

Handles 7845 Total 163316
Threads 452 Available 97048
processess 33 System Cache 29856

Commit Charge Kernel Memory

Total 176348 Total 45472
Limit 642544 Paged 37276
Peak 637424 Nonpaged 8196

When I try to start Zone Alarm Pro it will not initialise. When I start this
program PF Usage goes from about 180Mb to over 500Mb.

I'm getting a lot of HDD activity when I open applications and this
seriously slows down the PC.

I've not changed the Startup Items (msconfig). IOW, I cannot see the problem
being with Startup Items.

A DrWatson screen did come up before this problem and this program
made a change to some (probably) system file. No idea why DrWatson
was activated or if had anything to do with things.

Can anybody point to what action I can take to psyche out the problem?

TIA.

 

[JS]

I think you need to add more memory (256MB minimum), that said look at
Process Explorer and eliminating unnecessary services.

Eliminating services:
See: http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm
or http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm

Process Explorer:
Once you have Process Explorer installed and running:
In the taskbar select View and check 'Show Process Tree' and the 'Show Lower
Pane' options.
(This will provide the detailed info you need)
Next click/Expand the Svchost.exe process that you are interest in.
Then highlight one of the process listed under Svchost, right click and from
the options listed select: google
This should display what out there on the web about that process.

JS

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

How full is your hard drive? If it is almost full, you will get virtual
memory warnings..

 

[Guest]

I can say I am actually surprised you got Winxp to work on your system. All
of the suggestion put forth are good ones however I would also say it is time
to install more Ram 512 would be my suggestion.

 

[Galen]

In Richard had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I'm running XP professional on a Pentium II at 350Mhz. I've got 160Mb
of RAM, and I've never had a problem with Windows XP.

I've *not* recently installed an application, but now it appears
160Mb of RAM is insufficient. Of course, I download the windows
updates.
Windows used to load in about 6 minutes, now it takes about 20. During
startup I get:

"Virtual memory too low. Your system is low on virtual memory.
Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file.
During this process memory requests for applications may be denied."


Okay, right after startup, with no applications running, I get these
figures from Task Manager:

Totals Physical Memory

Handles 7845 Total 163316
Threads 452 Available 97048
processess 33 System Cache 29856

Commit Charge Kernel Memory

Total 176348 Total 45472
Limit 642544 Paged 37276
Peak 637424 Nonpaged 8196

When I try to start Zone Alarm Pro it will not initialise. When I
start this program PF Usage goes from about 180Mb to over 500Mb.

I'm getting a lot of HDD activity when I open applications and this
seriously slows down the PC.

I've not changed the Startup Items (msconfig). IOW, I cannot see the
problem being with Startup Items.

A DrWatson screen did come up before this problem and this program
made a change to some (probably) system file. No idea why DrWatson
was activated or if had anything to do with things.

Can anybody point to what action I can take to psyche out the problem?

TIA.

Make sure that Windows is set to handle the pagefile and that it isn't
limited. Virtual memory and RAM aren't the same things. As for the Good
Doctor Watson they're harmless, annoying but harmless. He's more or less
just a messenger though he usually carries with him bad news.


--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"At present I am, as you know, fairly busy, but I propose to devote my
declining years to the composition of a textbook which shall focus the
whole art of detection into one volume." - Sherlock Holmes