Open Forum → Re: can anyone help?????

windows 98se and nortan 2001. I only have 68megs of ram at start up that is free. This sound right? 78% resources.

Welcome to the world of windows..
this is perfectly normal, windows is a huge memory hog.
the only flavor of windows i've seen that used less than 40MB of RAM for basic OS was NT Terminal server which is based mainly on Citrix code.. great piece of software, that.

All those little cute icons on your task bar created by ME eat away your memory bit by bit. ME actually starts and runs those applications in memory so once you click on them they pop up fast and to create an illusion that your system is much faster than it actually is. That's why for example IE starts up much faster than Netscape. It's because it had simply started the moment you booted up your system. Just another way for M$ to fool people and for that your RAM is sacrificed.
--
You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long.

Just to be on the safe side, you could run a utility like Sandra to get a report on used and available memory. My point is that it is possible that some of your RAM is damaged, particularly if more than one DIMM is involved.

Also, upon boot-up, watch the BIOS memory check that occurs before Windows starts. (You might need to disable "quick boot" in the BIOS.) See if your PC reports less than 128 MB available at that point.

But as everyone has said, it sounds like normal Windows "gimme gimme more RAM" behavior.

Last tip -- click Start, Run, MSCONFIG, go to the Startup tab, and be amazed at how much crap is loading with Windows. Of course, be careful what you disable there.

-- B

Personally I'm glad to see Windows use all my memory. After all, I paid dearly for it and I do not want it going to waste. I load up my systray and autostart so I have as much of that expensive memory working for me. Idle memory is the Devil's playground, my granny used to say.

--
Random Fortune which made me spray coffee on the screen..."Did YOU get a digital watch in YOUR box of Velveeta?"