VERY serious problem with FreeRAM XP Pro 1.50

[John Corliss]

Thinking that a memory leak problem I have with one of my programs could
be dealt with by using this highly recommended program (5 out of 5 in
both Snapfiles own rating as well as user popularity), I tried to
install the program.

*Note that I've NEVER had this program or any other like it installed on
my system.*

First I set a System Restore checkpoint, then I opened Total Uninstall
and allowed it to do its thing. After the program completed installing,
I got the following (tediously long) error message:
_______________________________________________
"One of the following two erros has occurred:
1) You are trying to reinstall FreeRAM XP Pro. Please exit, uninstall
the program first, and then reinstall.
2. You have moved the FreeRAM XP Pro program file away from its
installation location or renamed it. Please undo these chances, or
FreeRAM XP Pro may be unable to function correctly.

Note: FreeRAM XP Pro was installed to C:\Program Files\YourWare
Solutions\FreeRAM XP Pro; please return the program file to this
location if this error was caused by moving the program file.

Press OK to exit now."
_______________________________________________

I closed the error window (neither of which items applied) and let Total
Uninstall finish the final part of monitoring the installation.

*GROAN*, I thought to myself, "here I go again..." and started going
over my options for undoing the damage.

The Readme file for the program says the following (cut and pasted):
______________________________________________
"2. UNINSTALLING

Click on the Information menu in the program window (not in the system
tray), and select the uninstall option. See our website
(http://www.yourwaresolutions.com) for an image showing where to access
the uninstall option in the program, if you still cannot find it.
______________________________________________

The only problem of course, was that since the program *refused to run*,
uninstallation via this method was impossible. Not only that, but there
was *no listing* for the program in the Control Panel "Add/Remove
Programs" module either!

I immediately tried to use Total Uninstall to remove the program and the
result was a total crash of my system.

Luckily for me, I'm using Millennium Edition with System Restore, so
after rebooting and allowing Scandisk to check both of my hard drives, I
used that final option and it saved my bacon.

Final notes:

The website for the program
(http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/index.html) provides no means
whatsoever of contacting the program author(s):

"Unfortunately, we can no longer provide e-mail based support due to
technical, logistical, and practical issues. Please consult the FAQ if
you have a question about our software. For bug reports and feature
requests, you may tell us about it on our Feedback page. Thank you."

The FAQ doesn't deal with the issue and the "Feedback page" is "still
under construction".

YMMV, but my advice to everyone is to stay clear of this program,
*especially* if you're using W98 or W98SE, neither of which has System
Restore.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[hummingbird]

Thinking that a memory leak problem I have with one of my programs could
be dealt with by using this highly recommended program (5 out of 5 in
both Snapfiles own rating as well as user popularity), I tried to
install the program.

*Note that I've NEVER had this program or any other like it installed on
my system.*

First I set a System Restore checkpoint, then I opened Total Uninstall
and allowed it to do its thing. After the program completed installing,
I got the following (tediously long) error message:
_______________________________________________
"One of the following two erros has occurred:
1) You are trying to reinstall FreeRAM XP Pro. Please exit, uninstall
the program first, and then reinstall.
2. You have moved the FreeRAM XP Pro program file away from its
installation location or renamed it. Please undo these chances, or
FreeRAM XP Pro may be unable to function correctly.

Note: FreeRAM XP Pro was installed to C:\Program Files\YourWare
Solutions\FreeRAM XP Pro; please return the program file to this
location if this error was caused by moving the program file.

Press OK to exit now."
_______________________________________________

I closed the error window (neither of which items applied) and let Total
Uninstall finish the final part of monitoring the installation.

*GROAN*, I thought to myself, "here I go again..." and started going
over my options for undoing the damage.

The Readme file for the program says the following (cut and pasted):
______________________________________________
"2. UNINSTALLING

Click on the Information menu in the program window (not in the system
tray), and select the uninstall option. See our website
(http://www.yourwaresolutions.com) for an image showing where to access
the uninstall option in the program, if you still cannot find it.
______________________________________________

The only problem of course, was that since the program *refused to run*,
uninstallation via this method was impossible. Not only that, but there
was *no listing* for the program in the Control Panel "Add/Remove
Programs" module either!

I immediately tried to use Total Uninstall to remove the program and the
result was a total crash of my system.

Luckily for me, I'm using Millennium Edition with System Restore, so
after rebooting and allowing Scandisk to check both of my hard drives, I
used that final option and it saved my bacon.

Final notes:

The website for the program
(http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/index.html) provides no means
whatsoever of contacting the program author(s):

"Unfortunately, we can no longer provide e-mail based support due to
technical, logistical, and practical issues. Please consult the FAQ if
you have a question about our software. For bug reports and feature
requests, you may tell us about it on our Feedback page. Thank you."

The FAQ doesn't deal with the issue and the "Feedback page" is "still
under construction".

YMMV, but my advice to everyone is to stay clear of this program,
*especially* if you're using W98 or W98SE, neither of which has System
Restore.

Sounds complete YUK. I'm particularly concerned as to why Total
Uninstall caused a complete system crash, I've not heard of any
problems with that utility before and recently started using it
myself.

 

[wald]

YMMV, but my advice to everyone is to stay clear of this
program, *especially* if you're using W98 or W98SE, neither of
which has System Restore.

In any case:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/41095/41095.html

Regards,
Wald

 

[John Corliss]

In any case:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/41095/41095.html

Thanks for replying Wald. Yes, I've always believed that memory
optimizers were hoaxes in general myself. However, in this case I was
hoping to be able to, on demand, unload .dlls from memory if they were
not needed as well as deal with memory leaks and not have to reboot.

Pie in the sky though,apparently.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[Frank Bohan]

To deal with your last paragraph first, as the name of the program includes
XP I do not think that anyone using a non-XP operating system would attempt
to use this program. FWIW I have it installed on XP Home (SP2) and it has
been working satisfactorily for a considerable time. If you are using XP I
suggest you re-install it without TotalUninstall, after a further Restore
Point and a registry save. FWIW the path where mine is installed is
C:\program files\FreeRam\FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40.exe.

===

Frank Bohan
¶ Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.

 

[Craig]

To deal with your last paragraph first, as the name of the program includes
XP I do not think that anyone using a non-XP operating system would attempt
to use this program.

<stuff deleted>

I can't comment on John's original post but, Frank, I had to comment on
the "XP" moniker...Having XP in a software package's name doesn't really
mean much. Often, it's just riding MS' marketing coattails. In fact,
the publisher of Freeram states:

FreeRAM XP Pro
Latest version: 1.50
Platforms: Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP (NT4.x is unsupported)

We haven't deployed this particular puppy but we've used plenty of other
"XP"-branded s/w on our Win2k & win98se boxes. CDBurnerXP comes to
mind. As always, we take the titles w/a grain of salt & look for the
supported platforms in a s/w's faq.

fwiw,

Craig

 

[John Corliss]

<stuff deleted>

I can't comment on John's original post but, Frank, I had to comment on
the "XP" moniker...Having XP in a software package's name doesn't really
mean much. Often, it's just riding MS' marketing coattails. In fact,
the publisher of Freeram states:


We haven't deployed this particular puppy but we've used plenty of other
"XP"-branded s/w on our Win2k & win98se boxes. CDBurnerXP comes to
mind. As always, we take the titles w/a grain of salt & look for the
supported platforms in a s/w's faq.

fwiw,

You're right Craig. In fact, it even says the following right on the
FreeRAM XP Pro site:

"FreeRAM XP Pro
Latest version: 1.50
Release date: 9-10-2005
File size: 605 KB (.zip format)
Platforms: Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP (NT4.x is unsupported)"

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> John Corliss

Thanks for replying Wald. Yes, I've always believed that memory
optimizers were hoaxes in general myself. However, in this case I was
hoping to be able to, on demand, unload .dlls from memory if they were
not needed as well as deal with memory leaks and not have to reboot.

Pie in the sky though,apparently.

What you're trying to force will still happen automatically as the RAM
becomes needed. No reboot required.

 

[bassbag]

Thinking that a memory leak problem I have with one of my programs could
be dealt with by using this highly recommended program (5 out of 5 in
both Snapfiles own rating as well as user popularity), I tried to
install the program.

*Note that I've NEVER had this program or any other like it installed on
my system.*

First I set a System Restore checkpoint, then I opened Total Uninstall
and allowed it to do its thing. After the program completed installing,
I got the following (tediously long) error message:
_______________________________________________
"One of the following two erros has occurred:
1) You are trying to reinstall FreeRAM XP Pro. Please exit, uninstall
the program first, and then reinstall.
2. You have moved the FreeRAM XP Pro program file away from its
installation location or renamed it. Please undo these chances, or
FreeRAM XP Pro may be unable to function correctly.

Note: FreeRAM XP Pro was installed to C:\Program Files\YourWare
Solutions\FreeRAM XP Pro; please return the program file to this
location if this error was caused by moving the program file.

Press OK to exit now."
_______________________________________________

I closed the error window (neither of which items applied) and let Total
Uninstall finish the final part of monitoring the installation.

*GROAN*, I thought to myself, "here I go again..." and started going
over my options for undoing the damage.

The Readme file for the program says the following (cut and pasted):
______________________________________________
"2. UNINSTALLING

Click on the Information menu in the program window (not in the system
tray), and select the uninstall option. See our website
(http://www.yourwaresolutions.com) for an image showing where to access
the uninstall option in the program, if you still cannot find it.
______________________________________________

The only problem of course, was that since the program *refused to run*,
uninstallation via this method was impossible. Not only that, but there
was *no listing* for the program in the Control Panel "Add/Remove
Programs" module either!

I immediately tried to use Total Uninstall to remove the program and the
result was a total crash of my system.

I tried it on 98se months ago , and although it installed ok , I did get
many unexplained crashes , and bsods after(there was no actual messages
pointing to t).I uninstalled it and they ceased.If you really want to use
a memory manager then rampage is probaly the very best as (as well as
auto and manual freeing)it has command lines that can do almost
anything.From experimenting with and without mem managers ,theres not
really any advantage to them other than monitoring poorly written
programes that consume huge amounts of ram ,by showing the ram in the
system tray/I recently stooped using counterspy ,because (using rampage
to monitor its ram usage)it used practically 1 meg of ram every second it
stayed open on my system.
me

 

[John Corliss]

What you're trying to force will still happen automatically as the RAM
becomes needed. No reboot required.

I've encountered similar claims when looking around on the internet.
However, that has not been my experience or else I would not have been
looking for a solution.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[REM]

John Corliss <[email protected]> wrote:

I've encountered similar claims when looking around on the internet.
However, that has not been my experience or else I would not have been
looking for a solution.

I had really great experiences with RamIdle when I ran 98SE and then
ME. Both were very stable, but badly written apps sometimes left them
unstable.

Last freeware version:

http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/ramidlnt.html


Unlimited shareware version:

http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/ramidl9x482.html

The unlimited shareware version terms are listed in the link. It's a
bit improved over the LFV, and it sounds like it will fit your
temporary needs. Don't let the 'S' word scare you off. The terms are
very generous.

Take some time to tweak the settings. I recommend checking the
"Disable the CPU usage protection" box shown in the photo. It taxes
the system heavily just to show a graph.

Regardless of what is said about such programs, I could tell a most
definite difference in stability on my 98SE and ME systems when this
program was running.

 

[John Corliss]

I had really great experiences with RamIdle when I ran 98SE and then
ME. Both were very stable, but badly written apps sometimes left them
unstable.

Last freeware version:

http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/ramidlnt.html


Unlimited shareware version:

http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/ramidl9x482.html

The unlimited shareware version terms are listed in the link. It's a
bit improved over the LFV, and it sounds like it will fit your
temporary needs. Don't let the 'S' word scare you off. The terms are
very generous.

Take some time to tweak the settings. I recommend checking the
"Disable the CPU usage protection" box shown in the photo. It taxes
the system heavily just to show a graph.

Regardless of what is said about such programs, I could tell a most
definite difference in stability on my 98SE and ME systems when this
program was running.

I just this morning discovered that my inclusion of this line:

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

into my System.ini file's Boot section, as recommended by somebody in
this group long ago, was responsible for a lot of my problems. For
instance, a huge slowing down of Start Menu opening. Now that I've
disabled that line, I'm going to wait and see (continuing to periodicaly
check my system resources) if I have any more such problems.

Although I doubt that I'd use a shareware version, regardless of the
generousity of their terms, thanks for your recommendation REM.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[Frank Bohan]

<stuff deleted>

I can't comment on John's original post but, Frank, I had to comment on
the "XP" moniker...Having XP in a software package's name doesn't really
mean much. Often, it's just riding MS' marketing coattails. In fact, the
publisher of Freeram states:


We haven't deployed this particular puppy but we've used plenty of other
"XP"-branded s/w on our Win2k & win98se boxes. CDBurnerXP comes to mind.
As always, we take the titles w/a grain of salt & look for the supported
platforms in a s/w's faq.

fwiw,

Craig

Thank you, Craig. My reply was somewhat hasty and I should have checked with
the website first. Wrist slapped!!! In my defence (or defense) I should
mention that I have several programs with XP in the name which *are*
specifically for XP. Regards.

===

Frank Bohan
¶ When all else fails, read the instructions

 

[John Corliss]

Thank you, Craig. My reply was somewhat hasty and I should have checked with
the website first. Wrist slapped!!! In my defence (or defense) I should
mention that I have several programs with XP in the name which *are*
specifically for XP. Regards.

It's true Frank. "XP" in a program's name may or may not indicate that
XP is a requirement. That's why I always read the info page before
installing a program.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[John Corliss]

I tried it on 98se months ago , and although it installed ok , I did get
many unexplained crashes , and bsods after(there was no actual messages
pointing to t).I uninstalled it and they ceased.If you really want to use
a memory manager then rampage is probaly the very best as (as well as
auto and manual freeing)it has command lines that can do almost
anything.From experimenting with and without mem managers ,theres not
really any advantage to them other than monitoring poorly written
programes that consume huge amounts of ram ,by showing the ram in the
system tray/I recently stooped using counterspy ,because (using rampage
to monitor its ram usage)it used practically 1 meg of ram every second it
stayed open on my system.
me

Thanks Bassbag. I'll check it out:

http://www.jfitz.com/software/RAMpage/

However, I was actually looking for something that removes unneeded
..dlls from memory. I think that means I want something that will free up
system resources.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[bassbag]

Thanks Bassbag. I'll check it out:

http://www.jfitz.com/software/RAMpage/

However, I was actually looking for something that removes unneeded
.dlls from memory. I think that means I want something that will free up
system resources.

Xteqsetup can unload .dlls immediatly (under system>memory)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=127
However this could impact certain programmes , and i personally havent
really noticed the difference abled or disabled.If your on 98 like me ( i
guess you wouldnt bother about resources if you had xp) , then ive found
that the only way to have a good resource figure is to pick and choose
your main programmes that run (av ,firewall,email client etc)I can run
Antivir ,kerio 2.15 , firefox and thunderbird and still have system
resources around 92 , wich isnt bad at all.
good luck
me

 

[BoB]

SNIP

I just this morning discovered that my inclusion of this line:

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

into my System.ini file's Boot section, as recommended by somebody in
this group long ago, was responsible for a lot of my problems. For
instance, a huge slowing down of Start Menu opening. Now that I've
disabled that line, I'm going to wait and see (continuing to periodicaly
check my system resources) if I have any more such problems.

Although I doubt that I'd use a shareware version, regardless of the
generousity of their terms, thanks for your recommendation REM.

I found an old recommendation on this too but it suggested the line
be located in system.ini file's [386Enh] section. Maybe it work better
in that location. I found I still have it there but it is set to 0.

Also, here's an old exchange on the subject:

---------

Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:27:33 GMT

I have read that putting "ConservativeSwapFileUse=1" in Win98SE's
system.ini file forces more aggressive use of system RAM (i.e. leaves less
of it idle). Is this true?

Can anyone explain in more detail what this setting actually does in a
Win98SE system?

What it does is to essentially turn your computer into a Windows 95
system in terms of swap file usage and management.

One of the more significant items eliminated by this setting is
"pre-emptive paging" which is the procedure where Windows 98 and
Windows Me will take advantage of idle time on the computer to write
out inactive memory pages to the swap file while still retaining the
page in active memory.

Then, when a need arises to free up memory for some more important use
those pre-written pages that are still inactive can be instantaneously
dropped from memory without having to write them out again.

The downside of this is that there are occasional bursts of hard drive
activity when the pre-emptive paging occurs.

The upside is that memory is freed up much quicker when needed, which
expedites the loading of new applications etc.

The overall result is that if your computer is not actually using the
swap file to any significant extent then the ConservativeSwapFileUse=1
setting may be of some value because the pre-emptive paging is not
going to be much if any benefit and when it occurs it can slow down
some games or video playbacks.

However if your computer is actually using the swap file then this
setting is going to hurt rather than help the overall performance of
your computer.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP

----------

Just info for the masses.

Yesterday's Duck/Beaver game was interesting, for a little while.

BoB

 

[David]

Thanks for replying Wald. Yes, I've always believed that memory
optimizers were hoaxes in general myself. However, in this case I was
hoping to be able to, on demand, unload .dlls from memory if they were
not needed as well as deal with memory leaks and not have to reboot.

Pie in the sky though,apparently.

I used memfree (I think) until I upgraded my video card to an ATI
Radeon 9200. After that any use of memfree crashed the video subsystem
and necessitated a reboot.
--
David
Remove "farook" to reply
At the bottom of the application where it says
"sign here". I put "Sagittarius"
E-mail: justdas at iinet dot net dot au

 

[John Corliss]

I used memfree (I think) until I upgraded my video card to an ATI
Radeon 9200. After that any use of memfree crashed the video subsystem
and necessitated a reboot.

Yep, tweaks and video cards can definitely play hell with system
stability. Since I removed that line from my system.ini file (described
in another part of this thread) my Start Menu stays speedy. I still keep
getting desktop redraws when I shut down various programs though.

Guess it's time for a total system reinstall. It's been a long time...

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[John Corliss]

Xteqsetup can unload .dlls immediatly (under system>memory)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=127
However this could impact certain programmes , and i personally havent
really noticed the difference abled or disabled.If your on 98 like me ( i
guess you wouldnt bother about resources if you had xp) , then ive found
that the only way to have a good resource figure is to pick and choose
your main programmes that run (av ,firewall,email client etc)I can run
Antivir ,kerio 2.15 , firefox and thunderbird and still have system
resources around 92 , wich isnt bad at all.
good luck
me

Don't forget Millennium Edition (which I use). Given the programs I have
running, I'm lucky to get 85 percent System and User resources at
startup. That figure steadily declines to about 67 percent as I run
programs.

I must admit that XP has that going for it (better multi-tasking and use
of resources.) Just can't get past that damned "product activation" bull
cr** though.


--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein, BEN
RITCHEY and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.