This question is usually asked by people who are used to Win9x. In those operating systems, the "percentage of free system resources" is a critical thing to know.

It actually arises because of an architectural limitation in Win9x: two system memory areas are extremely limited (64KB each) due to the 16-bit heritage of the OS.

This doesn't apply to NT4/2000/XP as it did in 9x. Memory heaps are essentially unlimited. There is no need or benefit in having some "percentage used" figure, and there is no such number displayed.

You can find out useful system information about resources (in the general sense, not the specific Win9x sense) from the Performance tab in Task Manager. Hit ctrl+alt+del (or ctrl+shift+esc for a direct route in Classic mode) to open up the Task Manager.

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by dave edited by slash
last modified: 2002-06-16 17:13:24