Virtual Memory (VM)Too Big? -- Slow Down in Processing

W

W. Watson

About two weeks ago, I was on my PC for day after day, and sometimes had 20
windows up. Things were getting a little slow. I even noticed typing was
lagging some seconds. At some point, I got a message about increasing VM. I
finally rebooted, but after a few days now still notice things are going
slowly. How do I reduce the size of VM or even determine how big it is? I'm
using 1G of real memory.
 
E

Ed Metcalfe

W. Watson said:
About two weeks ago, I was on my PC for day after day, and sometimes had
20 windows up. Things were getting a little slow. I even noticed typing
was lagging some seconds. At some point, I got a message about increasing
VM. I finally rebooted, but after a few days now still notice things are
going slowly. How do I reduce the size of VM or even determine how big it
is? I'm using 1G of real memory.
Click to expand...

Too much VM (or too big a pagefile, to be more precise) is not your problem.
Your Windows VM settings are currently set to allow the OS to manage the
pagefile size and I strongly recommend that you leave it this way.

Something else is eating up your CPU cycles or RAM. Id' suggest downloading
Process Explorer and Process Monitor from Sysinternals to identify what it
is...

Ed Metcalfe.
 
E

Ed Metcalfe

someone said:
Why would anyone download something when Task Manager gives the same info?
Click to expand...

They wouldn't, but Process Explorer and Process Monitor give a lot more info
than Task Manager.

Ed Metcalfe.
 
U

Unknown

Very good common sense question. And downloading other garbage usually ends
up causing problems.
 
E

Ed Metcalfe

Unknown said:
Very good common sense question. And downloading other garbage usually
ends up causing problems.
Click to expand...

Have you ever actually used either of these utilities? I'm struggling to
think of any problems that using them could cause and also any good reason
for you to assume they are garbage.

Granted Task Manager will allow you to identify which process is eating CPU
cycles and RAM but the two utilities I recommended will also provide a lot
more information on what the process is, what it is doing, which vendor the
process is from, what the parent/child processes are...

A lot more information is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/itsshowtime/result_search.aspx?speaker=8&x=38&y=6

Ed Metcalfe.
 
J

John John

Yet more proof of your complete and utter ignorance. The Sysinternal
tools suggested by Ed do much more than the Task Manager and most
Windows technicians have these tools in their basic toolkit.

John
 
W

W. Watson

For the moment, I'll use task manager. Things seem OK now. Maybe it's a DSL
slow down, but I have period where typing a message of 10 letters produces
nothing on the screen for 10 or more seconds. It goes like that for many
minutes. Nothing seems real responsive. I don't know what would effect
keystrokes. Anyway, I'll just keep TM open while I'm working and see what's
going on. The big tie at the moment is between Replay Radio (listening to
radio on the internet) and idle. SeaMonkey/Mozilla is the largest task
running, 610M. 3 taks between 50M and 20M. All others are less than
2M--probably about 20 of them Performance is oscillating between 40 and 60%.
PF usage is about 1.09G. Steady.
 
J

Jim

W. Watson said:
For the moment, I'll use task manager. Things seem OK now. Maybe it's a
DSL slow down, but I have period where typing a message of 10 letters
produces nothing on the screen for 10 or more seconds. It goes like that
for many minutes. Nothing seems real responsive. I don't know what would
effect keystrokes. Anyway, I'll just keep TM open while I'm working and
see what's going on. The big tie at the moment is between Replay Radio
(listening to radio on the internet) and idle. SeaMonkey/Mozilla is the
largest task running, 610M. 3 taks between 50M and 20M. All others are
less than 2M--probably about 20 of them Performance is oscillating between
40 and 60%. PF usage is about 1.09G. Steady.
Click to expand...
The most likely cause is too many processes that want execution time. Also,
too many processes consume excessive amounts of RAM for their page tables.
My guess is that you need a multi-processor system if you expect good
perfomance while having 20 instances of IE open. And, it would not hurt to
get a faster connection to the internet.

Jim
 
W

W. Watson

It's quite possible I do need a new CPU, but I'll wait into winter to worry
about that. I just went through the throws of upgrading another PC to dual
core, and other recent technology. DSL could be the culprit if I hit
activity here at a peak period. I use SeaMonkey, and not IE. :)
 
U

Unknown

MY ignorance? What a joke. You three are the ones downloading all the junk
on the 'net. I keep my computer clean and have no problems.
 
E

Ed Metcalfe

Unknown said:
MY ignorance? What a joke. You three are the ones downloading all the
junk on the 'net. I keep my computer clean and have no problems.
Click to expand...

I can only assume have a troll here.

Ed Metcalfe.
 
P

Paul Randall

I'm running WXP SP2 IE6 with few or no updates on a 1.7 GHz Celeron with 1
GB RAM. I recently posted a request for help figuring out how I could get
more windows open without the system becoming unstable. Got no replies on
how to open more windows. I can run with 40 windows open (a mix of 20-30
windows explorer, 5-10 IE, 2-3 Firefox, some notepads, some vbscript
editors, hex editor, etc., with no slowdown. At around 45 windows, I might
not be able to open another window. Right now I have 40 windows open, CPU
usage is around 10-15%, PF usage is 1 GB, and I have 438KB of available
physical memory. Anyhow, now you have something to compare to.

My keyboard occasionally (for a period of an hour, seldom more than once per
day, somtimes once per week) becomes unresponsive. Have to hit a key many
times for it to 'take'. I have a M$ wireless keyboard/mouse combo; I can
usually fix the problem by pressing the resync buttons on the wireless
receiver and keyboard. I might have to do this four times within an hour,
then the problem is gone for a day or more. I suspect interference with
someone's illegally overpowered short wave radio, but that is just a wild
guess. Since I live alone, I know there is noone running a microwave or
anything else in the house that might interfer.

Good luck with your problem.

-Paul Randall
 

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