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Strange loss of system resources



 
 
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  #51  
Old January 12th 09, 05:20 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
Curt Christianson[_3_]
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 10
Default Strange loss of system resources

"PCR" wrote in message
...

quote I know my GDI resources went up after switching to an LSD monitor.
end quote

You monitor your *LSD* ?? I just take mine as needed!! VBG

--
Curt

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://www.aumha.org/
http://dundats.mvps.org/AutoIt/default.aspx


  #52  
Old January 12th 09, 05:20 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
Curt Christianson[_3_]
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 10
Default Strange loss of system resources

"PCR" wrote in message
...

quote I know my GDI resources went up after switching to an LSD monitor.
end quote

You monitor your *LSD* ?? I just take mine as needed!! VBG

--
Curt

http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://www.aumha.org/
http://dundats.mvps.org/AutoIt/default.aspx


  #53  
Old January 13th 09, 01:37 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
PCR
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 4,396
Default Strange loss of system resources

Curt Christianson wrote:
| "PCR" wrote in message
| ...
|
| quote I know my GDI resources went up after switching to an LSD
| monitor. end quote
|
| You monitor your *LSD* ?? I just take mine as needed!! VBG

LOL! I only did it once long, long ago! And it was half a pill! It made
me sweat & worry I was dying! We walked to Pelham Parkway, & my older
brother was hugging a tree! But I just wanted it to end!

| --
| Curt
|
| http://dundats.mvps.org/
| http://www.aumha.org/
| http://dundats.mvps.org/AutoIt/default.aspx

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



  #54  
Old January 13th 09, 01:37 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
PCR
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 4,396
Default Strange loss of system resources

Curt Christianson wrote:
| "PCR" wrote in message
| ...
|
| quote I know my GDI resources went up after switching to an LSD
| monitor. end quote
|
| You monitor your *LSD* ?? I just take mine as needed!! VBG

LOL! I only did it once long, long ago! And it was half a pill! It made
me sweat & worry I was dying! We walked to Pelham Parkway, & my older
brother was hugging a tree! But I just wanted it to end!

| --
| Curt
|
| http://dundats.mvps.org/
| http://www.aumha.org/
| http://dundats.mvps.org/AutoIt/default.aspx

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



  #55  
Old January 13th 09, 03:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
PCR
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 4,396
Default Strange loss of system resources

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



  #56  
Old January 13th 09, 03:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
PCR
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 4,396
Default Strange loss of system resources

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



  #57  
Old January 13th 09, 06:23 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion,microsoft.public.win98.performance
thanatoid
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 2,299
Default Strange loss of system resources

"PCR" wrote in
:

SNIP

| 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.


Just a guess, but it probably only wanted 120MB if not
120KB!!!... When you're REALLY bored you could do a test
starting with 10MB (or KB???) and going up by 10 with each
reboot...

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.


Well. I did as much as I could, and the biggest memory users
create their own temp memory spaces (music editing programs).
I'll take the risk. I don't know what your machine is, but RAM
is so cheap now... Even the lowly thanatoid got 1GB!

SNIP

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 do any DOS on this machine. Correction - BEFORE entering
Win98 I sometimes use XTGold for DOS or run Scandisk on the
entire drive, but then I always reboot.

You may recall about 5-6 weeks ago I posted about making my 14.5
year old 166/96MB a DOS machine and not being able to get sound
(it still had W95B installed). After weeks of ****ing around
with Creative files and drivers, I finally wiped the drive,
installed DOS 6.21 and ran the Creative DOS setup for my card
and everything works. The I added partitions, etc. Runs great.

|| 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.


So as I said, I'll take my chances. Anyway, what's the big deal?
You reboot and that's it. Nothing in my life has any importance
whatsoever including whatever I might lose in a crash.

| 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!


Well, it's at 100MB and an untouched virgin.

|| 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.


I guess. I /hate/ things that come and go.

| 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.


Frankly, I don't remember the swap file being used on this 2GHz
machine even when it only had 256 MB of RAM... and I /know/ it
hasn't been used since I put in the 1GB stick...

| 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.


Yes, it was superduper excellent and useful. And he put in two
lines from a pre-mental collapse Syd Barrett song!

I should go for 1 GB myself.


As I suggested a few inches above... Although 512 will do just
fine too...

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...


AAARGHHH! You use OE???????????? Shame!

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


| 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!


GRRRR.
Sigh.

|| 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.


(laughing out loud)

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


I have seen SO many "quick start" programs, some of which seem
really quite nice and save icon-used RAM and everything, but
it's a job I just never seem to be able to get around to...

I just have a well-configured logical start bar, with few
levels, and an icon toggler when I get tired of seeing them or
resources run low (which really has not happened except when
this thread started... Maybe this house was temporarily
possessed...)

SNIP

| 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!


I never saw anything like it! AND to add insult to injury it
appears it won't DO anything until you pay for it - it auto
started next time I booted and told me I still have 322 problems
and suggested I buy it right away (I WILL admit it was good at
finding the "problems" - but the problems were /really
minuscule/ - nothing even approaching important. It's off the
machine now. I run 2 really good reg cleaners and they might
well find the same "problems" or they just don't consider them
important enough... Haven;t run them in a while... AFA the
RegTool folks, they may like to scare people a little...

SNIP

| 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!


Yes, many people were. You were also lucky for your 1st
experience not to have put you in an institution for 6 years or
for life... It didn't happen to MANY, but it DID happen to quite
a few...

Syd Barrett (one of his pals from Pink Floyd slipped him some in
a drink) /never/ recovered. Sad, he was a great artist. Peter
Green (/original/ Fleetwood Mac founder) seems to have, after
20+ years!

SNIP

Thanks /again/.

--
"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
Anais Nin
 




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