Win98SE and system resources question

[Skyraider]

I have a AMD 1Ghz with 256mb ram with Win98SE installed. The system resourses seem to not free up when I close stuff. I have only 9% free right now with just a few (3 things open). None of them are big resource hogs. Any idea what might be going on? I have to reset my computer every so often or it will stop responding. Thanks for your help in advance.

[Jeff the Brit]

Pretty much normal behaviour for Windows 95/98. Not all apps return their share of resources when you close them and the amount available for the rest of the system drops. NT/2k does a better job of managing system resources and needs rebooting much less often.

[jbar1]

There are numerous 3rd party memmanagers on the web which will help with your problem. In a normal operating machine I dont think I have seen the resources reduce to 6% and not recover at least to a workable percentage. I use coral draw which is a fair hog and I have frontpage 2k also open with many screens for each open and have no Problems. I think there is something else going on

[campos562]

How does the taskbar look down there in the lower right corner of the screen by the clock? If you have more than, say, 2 or 3 icons down there, then you need to disable most or all of those programs to allow the rest of the system to have some memory. Those things are usually just a nuisance anyways, so disabling all but the graphics controller is advisable. That's how I run things and keep the resourses about 65% with internet connection, Photoshop, MSWord2K, and Outlook 2K with only 128 MB RAM.

[FooL]

These posts are right on Win9x are mem hogs. They eat and eat and rarely give much back. I believe jbar1 was pointing you in the direction of www.zdnet.com Go there and look into thier downloads section. Look up freeware and type in Memory Refresher or something of that nature for a search criterea. (or just memory, or RAM) What you're looking for will be all over your screen in 5 seconds flat.

Other thing is you could try msconfig and turn off some of your TSR's. (Terminate and Stay Resident) Clear out all of the non-essentials in your start menu. *To use msconfig--> hit start, run and then type in msconfig. Press enter. Hit the tab all the way to the right. Uncheck stuff you don't feel necessary. Don't worry, you can always go back and re-check it later if it's detrimental to your system.

My last suggestion, if you're really concerned about system resources is Windows2000. Win2k has an excellent memory usage curve. (Where Win9x flat-lines at about 128MB...W2K continues to utilize more ram efficiently.)

Or maybe when software vendors start writing for Linux, you could switch to that. But I don't recommend it for average user. Linux is incredibly effecient with system resources though.

Anyway, I've babbled enough.
::end system resources rant

[Sly]

Originally posted by Jeff the Brit:
Pretty much normal behaviour for Windows 95/98. Not all apps return their share of resources when you close them and the amount available for the rest of the system drops. NT/2k does a better job of managing system resources and needs rebooting much less often.

This pretty much the case, delete all programs that are not needed from the startup, and from the registry {from run type regedit than enter) Hkey_local_Machine
\Software\microsoft\Windows\current verison\Run, delete all that are not needed Do the same to run once, and run service...

Make sure you backup your registry FIRST....

[3fingersalute]

Originally posted by Sly69:
This pretty much the case, delete all programs that are not needed from the startup, and from the registry {from run type regedit than enter) Hkey_local_Machine
\Software\microsoft\Windows\current verison\Run, delete all that are not needed Do the same to run once, and run service...

Make sure you backup your registry FIRST....

And also under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER, same keys!

[Larommi]

Originally posted by Skyraider:
I have a AMD 1Ghz with 256mb ram with Win98SE installed. The system resourses seem to not free up when I close stuff. I have only 9% free right now with just a few (3 things open). None of them are big resource hogs. Any idea what might be going on? I have to reset my computer every so often or it will stop responding. Thanks for your help in advance.

I still can't help thinking that 9% is too low no matter what is open and being closed. What kind of programs are you running? Every once in a while a program, by design or accident will not release any resources and the author will release a patch. I have encountered this on a few games. You could also have a "memory leak" that could be fixed by a patch.

I am running 98 SE and have 3 chat programs running along with a couple browsers, Outlook, Norton AV, ZoneAlarm and I never get that low on resources and when I close the programs I get most of the resources back.