low available RAM? normal?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jordan
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J

jordan

I have windows xp running on a machine with 512 megs of
RAM, and norton antivirus and internet security running
always, but the available RAM is always at around 260-
300 megs. I'm new to this sort of thing, but with no
other programs running that seems kind of low to me, can
anyone tell me whether this is normal, or if something
needs fixing with my system, and any ideas on what to
adjust to free up more RAM? any help would be much
appreciated, thanks,
-jordan
 
jordan said:
I have windows xp running on a machine with 512 megs of
RAM, and norton antivirus and internet security running
always, but the available RAM is always at around 260-
300 megs. I'm new to this sort of thing, but with no
other programs running that seems kind of low to me, can
anyone tell me whether this is normal, or if something
needs fixing with my system, and any ideas on what to
adjust to free up more RAM? any help would be much
appreciated, thanks,
Click to expand...

"Available" RAM is RAM that Windows hasn't yet figured out how to use. The
old adage tends to be true that "Free RAM is wasted RAM." Don't fret this at
all. Windows is *supposed* to lay claim to as much of the RAM as it possibly
can, and then figure out how to allocate it.

Here are a couple of articles to read - the first is on Windows 9x, but
explains underlying principles pretty well - the other is specifically on
Windows XP:
http://aumha.org/win4/a/memmgmt.htm
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

--
Jim Eshelman, MS-MVP Windows http://aumha.org/
AumHa Forums: http://forum.aumha.org/
The Parasite Fight: http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm
Computer Health: http://aumha.org/a/health.htm
Troubleshooting: http://aumha.org/a/tshoot.htm
 
Jordan

Have you looked at the Processing Tab in Task Manager?
Ctrl+Alt+Del

--

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Hope this helps.

Gerry
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