rogue male Posted April 24, 2001 Share Posted April 24, 2001 Looking for suggestions on how to increase my available system resources. If I boot up my pc and close all programs I can in the tray on the right side of my toolbar and do not launch any programs I can only manage about 71% of my available RAM. I'm not using a screensaver, background, and only have 16 desktop icons. My system is HP Pavilion w/ 96 MB RAM, Win 98 SE, Cougar Maxigamer Video Card w/32 MB, 500 Mhz Celeron processor, not sure what kind of motherboard. Anyone have any suggestions on how I can boost my available RAM so I can have more available when I run CM? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanks a Lot Posted April 24, 2001 Share Posted April 24, 2001 Increasing your RAM would help. You could try running Msconfig.exe that's located in the windows/system directory. Under the startup tab you might find programs running you don't realize. You can disable them, but make sure you know what you are disabling. There are utilities that are suppose to free up memory if you search around. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted April 24, 2001 Author Share Posted April 24, 2001 I take you mean buy an additional 32 MB of RAM? Given the price, probably the easiest fix. I just kind of bugs me that nothing much is running and I can't even get 3/4 of my RAM free. I'll check again for running programs I may not realize are running. I think I may have already done this and closed everything I could. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted April 24, 2001 Author Share Posted April 24, 2001 Ok, went into MSconfig and closed a few things out (Had not done this before) and ahd 85% free when I rebooted. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanks a Lot Posted April 24, 2001 Share Posted April 24, 2001 85% is about all you can expect and it is a really good time to uprade your memory. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted April 24, 2001 Share Posted April 24, 2001 Check the MsConfig, the only things you really need are the virus scanner, systray, scanregistry, and explorer. Also, do not waste the shipping costs of buying 32mb of ram. Buy at least 128mb if not 256mb. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted April 25, 2001 Author Share Posted April 25, 2001 I still have 19 items checked in the Start Up tab, several are related to McAfee anti virus software I guess, but some of the others I have no clue. I can list them if someone wouldn't mind reviewing them items I definitely do not need to have checked. Yeah, I know, how boring. But I would really appreciate the help. On the RAM issue (with out starting another 128 MB vs 256 MB duel) I have read some of the posts on this board about it (128 vs 256) and while I am not a complete idiot my pc knowledge is pretty fundamental. It seemed to me that above 128MB the "law of diminishing returns" comes into effect. I am hoping I can get away with only upgrading to 128MB of RAM, which would mean I actually need to purchase 64MB of RAM not 32MB since I have 2 DIMMS to work with. Yeah I want to do it as cheaply as possible too. Lastly, where does one look for RAM on the Web? Thanks again to anyone who takes the time to reply to this super exciting thread! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmead Posted April 25, 2001 Share Posted April 25, 2001 Ramseeker.com is a good place. Whoops sorry it is a Mac site, but memory is memory, in all likelyhood you need PC100. 128mbof PC100 or PC133 is running @40-50 bucks. At Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit CIty the prices are very similar so there is little to be gained by buying on the net. [ 04-24-2001: Message edited by: kmead ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted April 25, 2001 Author Share Posted April 25, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>At Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit CIty the prices are very similar so there is little to be gained by buying on the net. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Kinda what I was thinking, but I thought I'd ask. Retailers always seem to be pretty competitive and why wait for it to come in the mail. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olle Petersson Posted April 25, 2001 Share Posted April 25, 2001 I've got plenty use for this little program: End it All It will turn off almost everything currently using up your precious RAM. I use it on a regular basis before running CM. And it's very good to run it just before using Defrag. (I'm using a whole multistep routine procedure to optimise defragmentation of my HDDs.) Cheers Olle 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lmandrake Posted April 25, 2001 Share Posted April 25, 2001 Brick and Mortar stores have been dumping PC100 so it is worth it to look at flyers and ads for memory, but usually you should never buy memory at one of these places. Go to this site: www.pricewatch.com to search for memory prices. Beware of the vendors with the lowest prices, as they gouge on shipping to make money. To check on a vendor's reputation, go here: www.resellerratings.com Off the top of my head, I would suggest trying www.accessmicro.com or www.mcglen.com. I have never had a problem with either and if you can wait for UPS ground, their shipping is reasonable. It alwasys amazes me how some vendors can charge $15 dollars to ship a memory stick. Theirs must be made of depleted uranium. [ 04-25-2001: Message edited by: Lmandrake ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skorpion Posted April 25, 2001 Share Posted April 25, 2001 Ummm, while buying more RAM is always a good thing, it's not going to solve this guys problem. System Resources, as reported in windows refers to the 64KB section of memory (Also known as the stack space) that is used to hold things like window handles, icons and suchlike. It is easily possible to have less than 20% free system resources and still be using less than 96MB of RAM. Unfortunately, there is no solution to this, other than to load less programs and services, and most of the time this space can't be reclaimed when programs end. This is while you generally have to reboot Windows 9x every day or so or you will get errors. Of course, if you upgrade to Windows 2000 you won't have this problem, because the stack space is much larger in the NT kernel. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted April 25, 2001 Share Posted April 25, 2001 Well, list away. And having more memory is never, ever a bad thing. Especially when you might be able to put that 128mb or 256mb simm in your next PC. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted April 26, 2001 Author Share Posted April 26, 2001 Here are the items still "activated": taskbar display controls/scan registry/task monitor/system tray/load power profile/HPScanPatch/hpsysdrv/VsecomrEXE/usbmmkbd/keyboard mgr/adaptec direct cd/av console EXE/VsstatEXE/McafeewebscanX/Vsharin32EXE/Load Power profile/Encompass_encmontr/hidserv/Vshwin32EXE. A couple of items are listed twice, don't know why. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted April 26, 2001 Share Posted April 26, 2001 Ok. All you need is: system tray scanreg load power profile (x1) all of the mcaffe stuff (look at the target directory and if it says something like c:\program files\McAffe\ leave it) Everything else is optional. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radar Posted April 27, 2001 Share Posted April 27, 2001 I don't know about the others, but Crucial Technologies has very good prices for memory. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted April 27, 2001 Author Share Posted April 27, 2001 Thanks for the info wwb_99, if I can get my daughter (10 wk old) to take a nap somtime today I'll do some further tuning. The ultimate test will be if my system will efficiently run a scenario like August Bank Holiday. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted May 1, 2001 Author Share Posted May 1, 2001 "Ok. All you need is: system tray scanreg load power profile (x1) all of the mcaffe stuff (look at the target directory and if it says something like c:\program files\McAffe\ leave it) Everything else is optional." Done. If I close the McAfee stuff after I boot up, 94% of my system resources are free. Thanks for the help! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Johnson-- Posted May 2, 2001 Share Posted May 2, 2001 Don't buy HP? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogue male Posted June 1, 2001 Author Share Posted June 1, 2001 Kinda work for them so it was a company loyalty thing. I'll probably shop around when buying PC #2...whenever that happens. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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