ma said:
Hello,
I tried to find some type of data on this topic in
Google search to no avail.
Win XP Home. Dell Dimension 8250 with 2.4 GHz CPU (Intel P4),
and 1022 Meg RDRAM. ATI Radeon 9600 TX.
Intel 850E chip set MOBO.
Checking system performance continuously:
I load Showbiz video editor. mem usage = around 29 meg
I open a project of Showbiz, a video of 3 gig, mem usage = 500 meg
& cpu usage = 55 - 99 %.
Start editing (like play small clips at a time), mem usage drops to
350 meg, and cpu around 60 to 99 %.
I check & add other mem usage (i.e. explorer 22meg, svchost 19meg,
and so on), totaling less than 600 meg of ram.
Then all of a sudden Showbiz freezes totally. No response. I have to
end task. Then I can start and go thru this again.
Why Showbiz (this could be any application) or XP do not utilize all
1022 Meg
of RDRAM (Rambus), and what can I do to make this happen.
Is this a problem with Showbiz or XP?
I also have 1.5 GIG HDD space as page file.
Without an error message it is difficult to identify the culprit.
Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.
Expand the Event Viewer category and browse through each of the three
sub-categories looking for red or yellow flagged incidents whose data
and time stamps correspond to your problems with Showbiz. Double
click on an item to see the details of that incident. Post the
details back here if you need further advice or assistance with it.
Most instances of random freezing with no associated error message
turn out to have a hardware related cause, with overheating, defective
RAM, and malfunctioning power supply being the 3 leading (but by no
means the only) suspects.
Check your computer documentation or with the computer/motherboard
manufacturer's web site for a monitoring utility that will provide
tracking of internal temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds; and which
will produce an alarm when any value goes outside the allowable range.
These utilities are not used often enough and they can prove
invaluable in tracking down a problem.
To test the RAM you can download DocMemory (free) from
www.simmtester.com or you can try the new free memory testing utility
from Microsoft which you can download from
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
Both these utilities create bootable diskettes (the Microsoft one can
also create a bootable CD if you have a burner) which you can use to
boot the computer and run the diagnostic automatically.
As for your memory usage, Windows will only use it if it can find some
useful or potentially usefull purpose for it. And perhaps your usage
is not creating a heavy enough demand to require the full amount. The
only real cause for concern, at least in my opinion, would be if
Windows were for some reason moving a substantial amount of active
memory pages from RAM to the paging file while at the same time there
is still a substantial amount of physical RAM going unused. There is
no easy way in Windows XP to check on the actual page file usage, but
you can download a free utility for this purpose from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/
Now to digress a bit, but it may be at least partially relevant.
Today I had a computer in the shop for cleaning and testing. The
owner is a heavy smoker and the machine was a mess with oily gooey
yellow dust clogging every vent hole on the case. He was also
complaining about chronic problems with errors on the machine.
After doing a basic cleaning of the machine inside and out with
compressed air I booted it up to ensure that it would still run. On
this particular machine the layout inside the case was such that the
CPU and cooling fan were underneath the power supply and obscured from
view.
I decided in view of the amount of crud that had been inside the case
that I should remove the CPU fan completely and clean the heat sink
thoroughly. So I powered off the machine and removed the power
supply. The fan & heat sink assembly was so hot it almost burned my
fingers when I touched it. I let the machine stand for half an hour
to cool down and then unclipped the cooling fan from the CPU. It came
completely out of the case - the power connector was not plugged in
and apparently never had been. The heat sink was completely clean
and shiny, and this is a 4 year old (Windows 98SE) machine owned by a
heavy smoker. There was absolutely zero indication of any dust or
anything else on the heat sink. My only conclusion was that the fan
had never been plugged in, probably not since the machine was
assembled.
The relevance? A hardware monitoring utility would have detected both
the zero CPU fan speed and the excessive CPU temperature and reported
them immediately, thereby avoiding 4 years of chronic problems and
possible premature aging of the CPU.
Hope this is of some assistance.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
