[RESOLVED] Windows 2000: the story of tcp/ip

[metric152]

Im running two machines. One at work and one at home that are both having the same problem. When i have only a few programs open everything works fine. My memmory usage according to task manager stays around 140-180mb. When i start opening up more apps and my usage gets to about 280-290mb all tcp/ip stops working. I cant go anywhere on the net, i cant connect to any network drives(whole network tcp/ip) and winamp starts skipping really bad. As soon as i close things and usage gets to under 260mb things to back to normal. Ive tried setting my swap file to 0mb, rebooting, and setting it back to 200mb but that didnt solve it.
The machine i have at home is a AMD athlon 700 with 256mb of generic ram with a geforce 256ddr, scsi hdd, cd-rom, dvd and cd-r, soundblaster live value, 3com nic, tv card using a microstar 6167. machine at work is AMD 750, 256mb of kingston value ram, voodoo 3 3000, ide hdd, cd, and cd-rw, soundblaster 64 and 3com nic and an asus k7m. the machine at work has ram in slot 1(1 piece of 256mb pc100) and the machine at home is in slot 1 and 2(2 pieces of 128mb pc100).
i have tried downloading every fix from the microsoft site and using sp1. nothing has fixed this. is anyone else having this problem?

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Life without living is a live lived in vaine

[This message has been edited by metric152 (edited March 07, 2001).]

[FooL]

It seems as though you start to experience problems when you go above and beyond physical memory. Try setting swap file to different partition than the one that operating system is on. Also try increasing your swap file to more than the physical memory you have. A good place to start would be 500MB.

To me, this sounds like your system is running out of memory and when it hits that 256 wall, it starts stealing it from resources with less priority. (i.e. winamp and nic card)

Hard to say much else without being there in front of the machine. Happy troubleshooting!

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Did you reboot the computer yet?

[weazel]

i agree...its recommended to use at least 1 1/2 times the total amount of physical ram.

[This message has been edited by Weazel (edited March 08, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Weazel (edited March 08, 2001).]

[metric152]

Well upping the virtual memory seemed to take care of the problem. now it runs out when usage hits 320mb. do you guys remember this happening with NT 4.0 sp6? seemed alot better then this.

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Life without living is a live lived in vaine

[Linthade]

Personally, I think your problems started when you put an AMD under the hood, but I won't harp on that too long. Every AMD machine I've ever used has had a horrid bottleneck in the drive management department.

Once you've run out of physical ram, you're on your swap and using hard drive to simulate RAM (as you know). Its not unusual to see machines lag & gag a bit when running Winamp and other continuous-stream progs when having also deal with swap.

Double your RAM. Buy some good HMS/Mushkin stuff to fix up your access times and you'll probably never get into the same memory/swap boat again.

*lin*

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*Life 1.0 is broke, 2.0 needs patched, and 3.0 isn't due out for 6 months. *sigh*

[mogul218]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Linthade:
Personally, I think your problems started when you put an AMD under the hood, but I won't harp on that too long. Every AMD machine I've ever used has had a horrid bottleneck in the drive management department.

Once you've run out of physical ram, you're on your swap and using hard drive to simulate RAM (as you know). Its not unusual to see machines lag & gag a bit when running Winamp and other continuous-stream progs when having also deal with swap.

Double your RAM. Buy some good HMS/Mushkin stuff to fix up your access times and you'll probably never get into the same memory/swap boat again.

*lin*

</font>

I wouldn't go as far as to blame AMD. I currently run an AMD Duron 650 (not even close to top of line) and I'm running 384 MB of RAM. I burn CD's, do stuff online......multitask with no problems. I installed my OS in a 4 GIG partition for itself, then I used the 30 GIG partition for the swap file. It's all about how you tweak Win 2K rather than what processor you have.

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"Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."

[FooL]

I hate to disagree with a "Master Tech". But the 1 and 1/2 times physical RAM for swap file is not entirely true. It's a good rule of thumb...but the only way to precisely know what size swap file is right for you is to know your system and your usage habits.

In Win 9x you could keep a log of your system monitor to keep track of your swap file size during normal usage. (i.e. turn on system monitor and have it write to log, then do your normal computer thing for a couple of hours/days. Then go back and see how big your Swap file got. That's the BEST method of knowing how big to set the file, not the 1 and 1/2 times RAM rule.)

I haven't figured out a way to get the performance monitor in task manager to write to log in Win2K...but it would suffice perhaps to push your system to the max of what you'd normally do and then open up the performace monitor....but now I'm rambling.

Also, one last note...NTFS file format really sucks for swap file. With an NT based system, my ultimate suggestion is to monitor your system and figure out what size swap file is right for YOU. Then partition a part of your drive that is that size and make that partition FAT32. Move your swap file to it and presto...life will be better.

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Did you reboot the computer yet?

[Curt]

One thing that has not been mentioned yet is that your page file should be on a different physical drive, not just on a different partition than your OS.

Experiment with the size of the page file. Try setting at 500 or 600 MB and see what happens.

Lastly, with the price of RAM these days, your best bet would be to spend whatever you can afford and max your Motherboard out with RAM. WIn 2K does an excellent job of making use of every last MB, unlike Win 9x/ME.

[metric152]

What ive done so far is just set my lower limit for virtual memory to 500 amd my upper limit for 1024. it seems to be acting better now.

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Life without living is a live lived in vaine

[This message has been edited by metric152 (edited March 09, 2001).]

[xsrvx]

I too have to disagree with the person blaming AMD for the problem. It was true the 486 chips AMD put out sucked big time,The K-5 and even the K6 sucked but the K6-2 did pretty well and the Duron and Athlon TB rock pretty well you just have to put the right hardware together which is true of an Intel Processor as well. I personally am not a big fan of the VIA chipset but AMD is not the problem here.

[metric152]

Awake


I just figured it out this morning. Im really used to win 98 on a clean intel install where all of the motherboard drivers are built into windows. the problem is with 2k nothing is really built in for the K7 boards. i went to asus's page this morning and grabbed the chipset drivers for the board and installed them. right now im running at 357mb usage and its working perfect. i dont know why i didnt think about it before. oh well. thanks for the help though.

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Life without living is a live lived in vaine

[kannibul]

what i would like to know is, what the hell are you running?

i set it to the recommended values in the system properties=> advanced area...
think is, if you are using that much memory, its time to upgrade.

[metric152]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by kannibul:
what i would like to know is, what the hell are you running?

i set it to the recommended values in the system properties=> advanced area...
think is, if you are using that much memory, its time to upgrade.</font>

its running fine now. all i needed to do was install the chipset drivers. im used to intel systems. even though ive had this box for over 2 years i never noticed the problem till now with i really start taxing it


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Life without living is a live lived in vaine