thanatoid wrote:
| "PCR" wrote in
| :
|
|
| Closing a program with Ctrl-Alt-Del won't necessarily free
| resources, because the program may not do its housekeeping
| regarding the resource heaps that way. The program needs to
| tell the system that heap space has been freed. If a
| program has hung & cannot be closed normally, possibly
| TaskInfo 2000 will get it to close in an orderly manner. I
| know EndItAll2 will first send a close request to a hung
| program. If it still fails to close, then it will be killed
| the way Ctrl-Alt-Del kills them.
|
| Yeah, I have EndItAll as well but I only use it to end it all,
| for whatever reason.
|
| I think the "always unload DLL's" reg. key is helping, maybe,
| perhaps...

I doubt a .dll itself sets up & uses resources. I guess it could
possibly have an effect on resources to have a program unload its .dlls
when it closes. Maybe the presence of a .dll in RAM or on some list is
itself a kind of resource that will increase when the .dll is unloaded.
I can't really say for sure.

But I see in your experiments with Buffalo you really haven't been able
to reproduce the original problem-- very good!

| The more RAM, the less chance there will be a need to use
| the swap file. Looks like "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" is
| meant to revert to Win95 determinations as to when to write
| to the swap file...
|
| • INFO: The Windows 98 PageFile_Call_Async_Manager Service
| (223294) - If this entry is absent from System.ini, the
| default setting
| for ConservativeSwapfileUsage is 1 for Windows 95, and 0
| (zero) for Windows 98. When Windows 98 performs
| asynchronous ... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223294
|
| This is just too confusing...

Yep.

| • 125 tips for Windows 98
| (835834) - ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1. This could reduce
| the amount of
| disk swapping Windows does, and so speed up your system..
| http://support.microsoft.com/kb/835834
|
| This makes sense, and with 1GB RAM on 98SELite it was not
| surprising that the swap file never gets touched. That's why I
| set it to 200MB instead of 2.5 GB ;-)

Well, I know I've experienced a horrible crash after entering a Windows
DOS session with the swap file turned off, i.e., it had a size of zero.
Therefore, the smaller you make a maximum, the more likely you will
experience a crash-- if/when there is a demand for RAM that doesn't
exist. I only have 384 MB total.

|| But I'm not sure it has anything to do with resources.
|| And I can't quite recall what it is supposed to do! Maybe
|| it reverts swap file handling back to Win95 methods,
|| which I think spent less time anticipating the size to
|| make the swap file. This is probably what you want to
|| do-- instead of setting the max/min to the same number!
|
| Well, the ONLY way to stop Win 9x from constantly checking and
| adjusting the swap file size is to set it to be the same size
| and tell Windows to lay off. That was one of the first tweaks
| for 9x I read, and I have stuck to it. It makes sense, has
| worked perfectly for me for 14 years, and anyway, with 1GB of
| RAM it appears to become irrelevant - on THIS machine anyway, it
| might be different with a 4GHz dual core...

Well, careful with how many DOS windows you open, especially if you set
a small max. Each one is a virtual machine! You could have a horrible
crash!

|| I don't know. I've had the swap file set to min=max, about
|| 2.5 (this time it's just 200MB since nothing ever uses it
|| anyway :-) , ever since 1998 or so. Hard to get rid of
|| some habits.
|
| It has been said, in a rare circumstance-- you could have a
| horrible crash that way!
|
| Well, I never have in 14 years :-)

They said it's a rare circumstance.

| That's why I discontinued the
| practice, myself-- though it actually is suggested in
| Windows 98 Secrets (Livingston/Straub), pp.1041-1042! It
| says to defrag the drive first for contiguous space. Then,
| set both the max & min to same size of 2.5 x installed RAM.
| That was nearly 1 GB for me! This is meant to reduce
| certain swap file processing activity-- which I guess is
| re-sizing decision making.
|
| See above why I set it to 200MB. It could be 50 MB, I am sure.

The closer you get to zero-- the less likely you may get another 14
years!

|| And EVERYBODY having a different opinion on the RIGHT way
|| to set it up doesn't help either!
|
| Maybe try the easily reversible experiments Buffalo has
| suggested.
|
| I have. The results were not as clear as one would like them to
| be, see my reply to him.

I saw. Looks like you haven't been able to reproduce the problem. That's
good enough.

| SNIP
|
| It could still be worthwhile to play with swap file & disk
| cache settings, because they may have an effect on your
| browser's doings.
|
| How? I see no direct relation.

A program may check for those things & do things differently that cause
it to use a different number of resources.

| Also, check the size of your TIF storage
| area-- maybe make it larger or even smaller.
|
| I was wondering what TIF meant... Well, in my case that would be
| the cache directories for FFox and Opera - they are not
| adjustable in any manner that I am aware of, although I have NOT
| read the FFox help file, but it is Opera that seems the bigger
| culprit anyway... Ob1 uses RAM for cache and needless to say has
| NO problems with 1GB... (I used to sometimes hang the machine
| with 10 Ob1 windows open when I was using my 166 with 64 MB of
| RAM...) It really is the perfect browser, and if those maniacs
| didn't develop Java and flash it would be the ONLY browser
| necessary... And we would all waste a lot less time on mostly
| futile attempts to recapture our past and youth, which is how I
| largely see the use of FLV (if not most of the web) by anyone
| over 40.

I see Etal supplied good info on that.

|| Do you have "System Monitor" in START... System Tools? If
|| not, get it from "START, Settings, Control Panel,
|| Add/Remove Programs, Windows Setup tab, D-Clk System
|| Tools, check System Monitor, OK, Apply, OK".
|
| I used it yesterday for 2 hours, it showed that the swap file
| was never touched, so I turned it off. I find most of its other
| info incomprehensible and I am too old to learn what it is.

I agree there are a lot of items & one often must guess what some of
them mean.

| May as well
|| take "Resource Meter", too.
|
| I have it in the "sys utils" subsection of my start menu, and I
| have been using it when doing these experiments. See reply to
| Buffalo.

I saw. Very good.

|| Now, go through the menus and
|| at least have it display
||
|| (a) Swap file in use.
|| (b) Swap file size.
|| (c) Swappable memory.
|| (d) Unused physical memory.
|| (e) Allocated memory.
|| (f) Disk cache size.
|| (g) Locked memory
|| (h) Other memory
|| (i) Kernel Processor Usage
|| (j) Kernel Threads
|
| I'll have to look up Kernel threads on Wiki. Please don't waste
| time explaining it - you have been far too helpful as it is.

Uh-huh.

|| Keep an eye especially on Swap File in Use & Disk Cache
|| Size before/after the problem begins.
|
| As I said, swap file use has stayed at 0 I believe since I put
| in the I GB of RAM 3 months ago.
| It didn't occur to me to monitor Disk Cache, I understand that's
| what the
|
| [vcache]
| MinFileCache=0
| MaxFileCache=524288
|
| section applies to. But my free RAM has never gone below 400MB
| or so since I've had the 1 GB stick.

I should go for 1 GB myself. With 384 MB RAM, I find I can cause a small
swap file usage by doing an OE compact of folders. It happens during the
compacting of...

G:\Outlook Express Storedir
Directory of G:\Outlook Express Store
MYSENT~1 DBX 120,237,632 12-30-08 6:40p My Sent Items.dbx

|| I feel /terrible/ saying this after you went to so much
|| trouble describing the procedure, but I don't think I can
|| muster up the patience to go through such a process. Also,
|| I have played with System Monitor and I find it 50%
|| mystifying and 50% annoying. I just LOVE it when you click
|| the ? on "page discards" and it tells you "shows page
|| discards", or something. How f*g helpful.
||
|| So I have basically decided to forget about its existence.
|
| That was basically all written long ago, not just now. I
| suspect disk cache involvement in the resources problem. I
| know mine grows very large when I get a resources crash
| over a different matter.
|
| OK, I'll start monitoring it. AT this moment (1 browser window,
| Xnews, few small utils) it is using under 60KB. LRU cache
| recycles = 0.
|
| Any particular other disk cache graphs I should be looking at?
|
| (Example of "MS help": "Minimum cache pages = explain =
| Minimum number of disk cache pages." ALRIGHT!!!)

That's a well-named item!

| Resource Meter puts up a warning of its own. Unfortunately,
| sometimes that warning is hidden under another window! But
| its icon in the Tray also will turn red-- if only one can
| remember to look at it once in a while!
|
| There is no setting for WHEN it will turn yellow or red... But I
| have noticed it doing so on rare occasions... I must say I
| prefer FreeRam XP telling me I am under 20% on 1 or more of the
| 3...

Alright.

|| Perhaps put Resource Meter in your Tray, to see how low
|| they get. A reboot would clear it
|
| That's what I meant before when I said no way to cure sys res
| except Ctl-Alt-Del... It was a slight simplification and a weak
| attempt at a joke.

Alright. Ha ha, yea, funny.

|| but, obviously, it's
|| better to cleanup your Startup Group. Do you have
|| "Resource Meter" in START... System Tools? If not, get it
|| from "START, Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove
|| Programs, Windows Setup tab, D-Clk System Tools, check
|| System Resource Meter, OK, Apply, OK". May as well take
|| "System Monitor", too.
|
| Like I said, they're very easy to start manually... I sort of
| hate to take the 'decisive" step of putting it in startup...
| Like admitting I have a horrible unsolvable problem I have to
| watch forever from now on...

I have Resource Meter in Startup & System Monitor in the QuickLaunch
bar.

|| Right now FreeRAM XP is telling me I have 65%, 65%, and
|| 77%. Not bad. I have XNews running, Firefox is loaded but
|| I haven't gotten around to going to a site with it yet
|| (trying to find the link as I write this!). Not bad.
|
| Those are respectable figures. That 1st figure -- system
| resources -- is always set to the lower of the other two.
| It has no separate meaning of its own. My own figures right
| now are 50% System, 50% User, 70% GDI. I'm online in this
| NG & have done some browsing.
|
| I'm at 51, 51, 64. About the same activity as you.

I am 54, 54, 57 right now.

|| (A little later, I have 2 FFox windows open in addition to
|| above, and I am at 56%, 56%, 69%. Still not bad. There
|| were NO images to speak of on any of the pages I have gone
|| through.)
|
| Keep it up. Check those resources after going to each of
| your favorite sites. Do they increase after closing a site?
| Try closing the browser too to see whether it will free
| them.
|
| Yes, they go up noticeably. When I closed almost everything they
| went up into the 70-80% area.
| I have not determined for sure whether the "always unload DLL's"
| is helping here or not... That's the next (and possibly last)
| test... The basic result of the test, although not terribly
| conclusive, in fact not at all conclusive, is what I thought
| from the beginning, that when I go to very graphic-rich web
| pages with the big browsers or use an image browser running
| through many photos, that eats a lot of GDI's.

I think that makes sense.

| I tried something called RegTool (http://www.RegTool.com/) since
| it claims to fix Opera crashing with the flash plugin... The
| GDI's went down below 20 when I was running it, and went up to
| 75% when I closed it. That was weird. Have not found out yet
| whether it /did/ anything, I wanted to reply to you guys first.

That's one greedy app!

| SNIP
|
|| control, except by prayer maybe. I know my GDI resources
|| went up after switching to an LSD
||
|| ahem...
|
| Yikes! I only did that once-- & I didn't like it!
|
| My head is messed up enough as it is... But I used to know
| people who ate it like candy... It seems most people either take
| i once or a LOT... Then there are those poor *******s like Peter
| Green or Syd Barrett... I have a feeling I would have ended up
| like them...

I was lucky for a bad experience on the 1st try!

|| Very interesting,. Another argument for my arsenal of
|| anti-LCD monitor information.
|
| No-- I have more GDI resources with this LCD monitor than I
| had with its non-LCD predecessors!
|
| I misread - I am VERY prejudiced against LCD's... I understood
| that USE of GDI's has gone up.
| Frankly, I can NOT figure out what the monitor type could have
| to do with GDI's.

Alright.

| SNIP
|
|| http://www.pcmag.com/ 's StartUpCop has "undo", and it is
|| more than a combination of "START, Run, MSInfo32,
|| Software Environment, Startup Programs" and "START, Run,
|| MSConfig, Startup tab". It can even do a permanent delete
|| from the Startup Group. This is configurable, and one may
|| maintain multiple configurations of items to include in
|| the Group.
|
| StartUpChanger 2000 does the same, it is VERY good. I would say
| I have about 75% of what Windows wants me to run ticked NOT to
| run. (WHAT the heck is WinDVDPatch/CTHelper? I don't even have a
| DVD drive!)
|
| I am also not afraid to go into the registry and remove "run"
| type stuff.

Alright. You do well with that.

| SNIP
|
| Understandable. Sounds like only the GDI Resources face a
| 64K limitation now. However, the heap or list that
| comprises the User Resources, although it can address more
| RAM for its "elements"-- still has a size issue. When space
| runs out for entries in the list (pointers to the
| elements)-- one is out of resources!
|
| Sorry, I don't /quite/ understand that (will read few more times
| ;-)
| Gotta look up "heap" on Wiki as well.

Alright. That's about the best I can do understanding it myself.

| Thanks /again/!
| t.
|
|
| --
| "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
| Anais Nin

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR