The Article in this link contains a very detailed explanation of Virtual
Memory:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm
Writing to and reading from RAM memory is much quicker than Virtual
memory ( the pagefile on your hard disk). This means you suffer a drop
in system performance if your system starts to write and read Virtual
Memory a lot. It becomes apparent that this is happening if the Total
and / or Peak figures under Commit Charge in Task Manager approachs the
Limit. There is always a certain amount of use of Virtual Memory but the
objective if you want to ensure good performance is to measure use of
virtual memory (pagefile usage). You can use PageFileMon a small utility
referred to in the link above.
It is apparent from the figures you have provided above that you have a
problem as the Peak is close to the Limit. Even resetting the pagefile
to 768-2000 is not resolving the problem, although it does help. My
questions were directed towards ascertaining why the demands for memory
are so high.
Most of your listed programmes are not obvious culprits. I am not sure
about AOL. Norton can have quite a large footprint and is not popular
with those of us who are aware of it. It is easily replaced on a Home
Computer with any number of Anti-Virus programmes. I use AVG 7.5 (Free)
for this very reason.
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-virus/us/frt/0
Leaving your computer on 24/7 is not such a good idea. Whilst memory
leaks are uncommon it means that if you have a programme with one it
takes memory in ever increasing amounts and does not return it to the
system after use. There are reports of a problem with Adobe Acrobat
Reader. What version do you have? Upgrading to the latest version 8.1
may help.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Otherwise many users who only need a PDF reader have turned to Foxit as
it is less resource hungry. If you want to edit PD files, however, you
need Adobe but
Foxit Reader (freeware) is a more satisfactory programme if your
requirements are limited to viewing and printing documents:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Photographic programmes often enable the user to edit their pictures.
When this feature is present the programme retains copies of the files
in memory until the user decides on a final version or to stay with the
original. These intermediate copies of the file require large amounts of
memory until a revised version of the file is saved. This is called an
Undo feature, which can exist in other programmes such as Excel, but
it's impact becomes more dramatic with graphics programmes because file
sizes are so large before you start using the feature.
You say you have 512 mb of RAM. Judging by the results from Task Manager
your system would benefit from increasing this. You need to tackle the
issues mentioned above first and then assess what is your usual /
typical pagefile usage using pagefilemon.
Use page file monitor to observe what is the peak
usage.Start it to run immediately after start-up and look at the log
at the end of the session.The log is Pagefile log.txt. If you right
click on the file in Windows Explorer and select Send to, Desktop
(Create Shortcut). The same applies to XP_PageFileMon.exe. You will
need to run it at intervals as it does not log continuously once
started.
A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm
--
Hope this helps.
Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gerry:
Thanks for your reply. I have no idea what the Commit Charge Peak
means but I do leave my computer on most of the time. The only
programs I have are I Explorer, Firefox (rarely used), AOL, Microsoft
Office Word XP, Excel (which I never use), power point, and mail
programs. I also use Norton and SpyBot. I'm not sure if any of these
are hungry programs. And I'm not sure if I use any old 16-bit
programs but the computer is relatively new. What did you mean
"party those incorporating Undo features"?
Yes, I use Acrobat Reader and I don't know which programs I use to
create temporary files other than I Explorer or AOL. Any other
suggestions?
help you can offer.
