Ram Question

**Patonb** · December 21st, 2004, 12:33 PM

Okay, I'm running 98se and its been locking up when I start up the internet, with msn, and sometimes kazzaa lite running. This usually causes a reboot, and occasional blue screen stating either systeem busy, or error.

Because of this I installed a task info program called Iarsn TaskInfo2003 6.x to chck on the processes runninng, It also monitors the system. The program teells me that my OS and applications are using 55% 0f the ram, annd the cache is usually running the rest of it.

What I don't know is this cache ram normal, or is there something wrong. I've run McAfee, trendmicro-housecall, search&deestroy, pestpatrol, ad-aware, and hijack this with nothinf beinng found.

I've also noticed a slow down in using thee web, i use IE 6, like i am out of ram, i have 128meg in a 500mhz Dell laptop.

Any help wiill be appreciated

**TechZ** · December 21st, 2004, 02:14 PM

Welcome to the forums Patonb

For one thing, 128 MB is very less ram nowadays, and IE is a ram hog.

What is the exact error on BSOD?

**Rogue1987** · January 3rd, 2005, 11:18 AM

Welcome to WD!

You may want to try more RAM. An extra 128MB ram can make quite a difference.

**Rogue1987** · January 3rd, 2005, 11:19 AM

Ah, crap. I posted on a dead thread. Oh well. First time for everything.

**TechZ** · January 3rd, 2005, 01:55 PM

well its not nice when they come, ask a question and never reply back.

**Patonb** · January 3rd, 2005, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by TechZ

well its not nice when they come, ask a question and never reply back.

Yha know whats even more "not nice"??

When tools like you make unnessesary comments like the one you just did.

I haven't replied to the question of what error it was as my computer usually just freezes with no blue screen, hence no error msg, and when i do get the error, no one is arround to write it down for me as i am a quadrapalegic and have extreme difficulty using a pen.

Also my original question was about cached ram and no one has touched on that yet.

I do know 128megs isn't much and am working on getting 256megs more.

Thanks for MOST of the replies

**TechZ** · January 3rd, 2005, 03:47 PM

my apologies, I didnt know, if we arent given more info, its hard to help someone. We have had instances before, where threads were started and help was given, but no one replied.

**geoscomp** · January 3rd, 2005, 04:18 PM

I know you will get as many opinions about this as there are people responding, but windows uses vcache in a transient fashion. The VCache concept is that, as long as there is unused RAM sitting about, we should just cache information in it that we might need again. Then, since this is only a “just in case” cache, if the RAM is needed for something else, part of the VCache contents are flushed and the RAM is made available. Generally, unless you have more than 128 mb of ram, you do not need to worry about setting a max vcache size.