Re: Memory usage question

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

I've decided that you all are right. I'm going to quit worrying about
memory usage and bootup time. Normally I only boot up once a day, so why
not turn the computer on, go get a cup of coffee, then everything will be
ready when I return to the keyboard.

I have another couple of questions under the title "2 additional question".
I hope you will be able to help me there as well.

Thanks a lot guys. I appreciate your expertise and willingness to help.

Norm


"Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eMuh1JRXHHA.4076@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
normanstrong@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I'm on my 3rd computer now. The first one had 256MB of memory and
about half of it was in use just sitting there running Windows 98 and
a few programs. The 2nd computer had 512MB of memory and about half
of that memory was in constant usage running XP. My latest computer
has 1024MB of memory and also runs XP. Strangely enough, 52% of that
memory is in use all the time.

What gives? Why is half my memory always in use, and how can I
determine what's in there and what I can do to lighten the load?


You have it backwards. There's nothing at all strange about it. Wanting to
minimize the amount of memory Windows uses is a counterproductive desire.
Windows is designed to use all, or nearly all, of your memory, all the
time, and that's good not bad. Free memory is wasted memory. You paid for
it all and shouldn't want to see any of it wasted.

Windows works hard to find a use for all the memory you have all the time.
For example if your apps don't need some of it, it will use that part for
caching, then give it back when your apps later need it. In this way
Windows
keeps all your memory working for you all the time.

Actually in your case, the reason you have so *little* memory in use is
that 1024MB is probably considerably more than you need for your apps.



I'm
especially interested in cutting down on the boot up time in the
morning.


My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying about. Most people
start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In the overall
scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't very important.
Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the morning, then go
get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I don't know how long
it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what programs
start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them from starting
that way. On each program you don't want to start automatically, check its
Options to see if it has the choice not to start (make sure you actually
choose the option not to run it, not just a "don't show icon" option).
Many can easily and best be stopped that way. If that doesn't work, run
MSCONFIG from the Start | Run line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the
programs you don't want to start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of running
the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell you, you
should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs you run, but
*which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but others have no
effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do is
determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what the
cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get more
information about these at http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you
can't find it there, try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.


There are lots of programs that run on start up, but I
don't know which ones are critical,


Other than the obvious security-oriented programs (anti-virus, firewall,
etc.), none of them is critical. You should have running what you want to
have running.


and which ones can be dispensed
with--at least on start up. Looking at Cntrl-Alt-Del processes shows
390MB in use all the time. I assume that the other ~100MB is used
for XP.
Is there some web site where all these programs are discussed?


See above.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup




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