Why have to cold boot to clean up XP?

[steve]

Hi,
After I have used XP for a day or so, I notice the performance going
down. I think this is related to memory being filled with gunk and
the mem not being relinquished(?) I see that PF usage is over a gig
(on a one gig machine). Could it be that? I use Free Ram XP Pro and
it does a good job but does not seem to get rid of this current
problem.

Therefore to get the performance back, I have to reboot the machine.

Is there another way to get things to a clean high performance state
without rebooting?

Thanks.

 

[John John]

The problem is probably caused by Free Ram XP Pro. Remove it and see
what happens.

John

 

[Bob I]

Some programs are badly programmed and the memory they use is not
returned to the pool. You might review your program usage and
uninstall/replace the bad actors in this instance.

 

[Dave B.]

It is not recommended to use memory managers with XP, contrary to popular
belief, free RAM causes XP to run slower, not faster, unused RAM is wasted
RAM. Remove it and reboot.

--

 

[Rock]

Hi,
After I have used XP for a day or so, I notice the performance going
down. I think this is related to memory being filled with gunk and
the mem not being relinquished(?) I see that PF usage is over a gig
(on a one gig machine). Could it be that? I use Free Ram XP Pro and
it does a good job but does not seem to get rid of this current
problem.

Therefore to get the performance back, I have to reboot the machine.

Is there another way to get things to a clean high performance state
without rebooting?

3rd party memory managers are snake oil and a waste of money. They do
nothing to improve the system performance, and could even reduce
performance. Get rid of Free RAM XP Pro. As one other poster said, free
RAM is wasted RAM.

Here is a link with tips for dealing with a slow computer.
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

 

[steve]

John John, I had the problem before installing Free Ram XP Pro and
actually that is reason I installed that app. It does a pretty decent
job of cleaning ram, but does not take care of my particular problem.

Bob, I have a php debugger that uses java runtime. I suspect that is
at least one of the culprits, but really cannot get rid of it.

I am hoping there is a "magic solution" that cleans up the ram and
restores it as if there is a cold boot event

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

John John, I had the problem before installing Free Ram XP Pro and
actually that is reason I installed that app. It does a pretty decent
job of cleaning ram, but does not take care of my particular problem.

Free Ram Pro, and all programs like it, are snake oil. They can not possibly
help you and often hurt.

Even if you had the problem before installing it, your first step in
troubleshooting should be to get rid of it. If you don't, it will be very
hard to troubleshoot the problem when something like that is interfering
with Windows memory management, and obscuring the issues.

 

[John John]

Using Performance Monitor to Identify a Pool Leak
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q130926

You can clear the cache with clearmem.exe (Resource Kit Utility) or with
this:

CacheSet v1.0
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/CacheSet.mspx

Third party memory managers wreak havoc on the working sets, they are
about equivalent to administering sugar to diabetics!

John

 

[steve]

Thanks, Ken. I will get rid of that app and report back here

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks, Ken. I will get rid of that app and report back here.

You're welcome, and good. Once you've done that, it's very likely that I or
someone else here will be able to help you.