Memory questions

My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite often
lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with old
orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get it like
factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a future
project.

My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:

The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the memory
check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss some
problem with the RAM?

Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200 MB of
RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes totals
under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to the
bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used or is
it no good?

Thanks in advance to a great NG,

Steve

See below:

Saga

"Steve" wrote in message
...
My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite often
lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with
old
orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get
it like
factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a
future
project.

My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:

The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the
memory
check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss
some
problem with the RAM?

Yes. The POST RAM test is a quickie, get a better utility to test the
RAM
exhaustively. Some one recommended some memory utilities in this ng a
few
days back, you might have to search past posts to locate this.

Here is the post: ******start post

"Unknown" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 16:20:20 -0500, "Brian A."
gonefish'nNO@SPAMafarawaylake wrote:

,;Test the memory.
,;http://www.memtest86.com/
,;
,;http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Thanks but that is one of the first things we did and then we doubted
the memory tester and put in a new stick of RAM. We do have a rather
expensive memory tester in the computer lab. The memory tested OK.

Boy, I'd sure like to be able to borrow that expensive memory tester!
;-)
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/communities...t/default.mspx

***************end post


Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200
MB of
RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes
totals
under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to
the
bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used
or is
it no good?

Thanks in advance to a great NG,

Steve

"Steve" wrote:

My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite often
lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with old
orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get it like
factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a future
project.

My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:

The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the memory
check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss some
problem with the RAM?

Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200 MB of
RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes totals
under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to the
bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used or is
it no good?

Thanks in advance to a great NG,

Steve


My first suggestion is that you ditch Dr. Watson. My experience is
that it is virtually useless for any sort of in depth diagnosis of a
problem, mostly because of the way it wraps excessive verbiage around
the error messages resulting in a bloated travesty that bears little
or no resemblance to the "genuine" error message. The reports from
Dr, Watson are especially useless for searching the Microsoft
Knowledge Base as all of the documentation there is based on the
"genuine" error message without the fluff and bumpf added by Dr.
Watson.

For example there are no articles whatever in the Microsoft Knowledge
Base that contain the phrase "Win32 Kernel core component". I
suspect that this error is actually an Invalid Page Fault of some sort
but without the "genuine" error message (culprit caused an Invalid
Page Fault in module victim [at error address]) it is impossible
to search for any known fixes for it.

Memload.exe is a program that is totally unknown to me and a Google
web search turns up only a few references to it, none of which work.
If it is part of some sort of "memory optimization" software then the
most charitable thing I can say about it is that it is pure
unadulterated crapware that is totally incapable of performing any
beneficial function for any computer under any circumstances. That
comment applies to all repeat all "memory optimization" programs.

Now for your memory usage question.

Memory exists to be used, and Windows will, by definition, attempt to
find some use, anything whatever that might potentially be of some
benefit rather that leaving the RAM sitting there idly going to rot.
And just as soon as some better use comes along for any of that RAM
then Windows will instantaneously drop the more trivial usages so as
to free up whatever amount is now required.

(If I were to really get wound up on this subject I would include some
additional comments such as "free memory is useless memory" and "if
you really want to have unused memory then take the RAM chips out of
the computer and mount them on the wall", but I will restrain myself,
at least for now.)

If you are only using 200 mb of RAM then I doubt that you are actually
*using* 100 mb of swap file. The swap file may be 100 mb in size, so
as to provide address space for the unused portions of memory
allocation requests, but I suspect that the actual usage, that is the
amount of active memory content that has been relocated from RAM to
the swap file, will be at or near zero.

I prefer using the System Monitor utility for checking most items,
other than CPU usage, with Windows 95/98/Me. In the current context
the relevant item is "Memory Manager - Swap File In Use". Use Edit -
Add to configure System Monitor to track specific items.

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

"Ron Martell" wrote in message
...
"Steve" wrote:

My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite often
lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with old
orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get it
like
factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a future
project.

My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:

The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the memory
check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss some
problem with the RAM?

Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200 MB
of
RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes totals
under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to
the
bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used or
is
it no good?

Thanks in advance to a great NG,

Steve


My first suggestion is that you ditch Dr. Watson. My experience is
that it is virtually useless for any sort of in depth diagnosis of a
problem, mostly because of the way it wraps excessive verbiage around
the error messages resulting in a bloated travesty that bears little
or no resemblance to the "genuine" error message. The reports from
Dr, Watson are especially useless for searching the Microsoft
Knowledge Base as all of the documentation there is based on the
"genuine" error message without the fluff and bumpf added by Dr.
Watson.

For example there are no articles whatever in the Microsoft Knowledge
Base that contain the phrase "Win32 Kernel core component". I
suspect that this error is actually an Invalid Page Fault of some sort
but without the "genuine" error message (culprit caused an Invalid
Page Fault in module victim [at error address]) it is impossible
to search for any known fixes for it.

If I were to write this information down at the time of the crash would
that help? I'm only suspecting the RAM because Dr. Watson said something
attempted to access memory that didn't exist.


Memload.exe is a program that is totally unknown to me and a Google
web search turns up only a few references to it, none of which work.
If it is part of some sort of "memory optimization" software then the
most charitable thing I can say about it is that it is pure
unadulterated crapware that is totally incapable of performing any
beneficial function for any computer under any circumstances. That
comment applies to all repeat all "memory optimization" programs.

Memload isn't an optimization program. It lists running tasks, more complete
than msconfig-startup, and gives numbers on used and free memory and swap
file. It's pretty small and I just downloaded it to check memory usage.

Now for your memory usage question.

Memory exists to be used, and Windows will, by definition, attempt to
find some use, anything whatever that might potentially be of some
benefit rather that leaving the RAM sitting there idly going to rot.
And just as soon as some better use comes along for any of that RAM
then Windows will instantaneously drop the more trivial usages so as
to free up whatever amount is now required.

(If I were to really get wound up on this subject I would include some
additional comments such as "free memory is useless memory" and "if
you really want to have unused memory then take the RAM chips out of
the computer and mount them on the wall", but I will restrain myself,
at least for now.)

If you are only using 200 mb of RAM then I doubt that you are actually
*using* 100 mb of swap file. The swap file may be 100 mb in size, so
as to provide address space for the unused portions of memory
allocation requests, but I suspect that the actual usage, that is the
amount of active memory content that has been relocated from RAM to
the swap file, will be at or near zero.

I prefer using the System Monitor utility for checking most items,
other than CPU usage, with Windows 95/98/Me. In the current context
the relevant item is "Memory Manager - Swap File In Use". Use Edit -
Add to configure System Monitor to track specific items.

The system monitor says swapfile size is 120M and allocated memory is 283M,
also disk cache(whateve that is) is 83M. does that sound normal for running
IE, OE, and the system monitor?

Also, I appreciate you taking the time to research my question on google
and the knowledge base.


Steve

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

In the warped and twisted terminology of Dr Watson, a reference to memory
that doesn't exist actually means a memory address that is invalid for the
program ("doesn't exist as part of this program's set of assigned and valid
memory addresses").

While it is possible that your problem is RAM related, the message itself
does not refer directly to a RAM problem, but rather to some program somehow
using an invalid memory address. This could be because faulty RAM corrupted
the data, or it could simply be that some software component got its
addressing wrong, or any number of other possibilities.

"Steve" wrote in message
...

"Ron Martell" wrote in message
...
"Steve" wrote:

My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite often
lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with
old
orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get it
like
factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a future
project.

My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:

The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the memory
check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss some
problem with the RAM?

Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200
MB
of
RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes
totals
under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to
the
bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used
or
is
it no good?

Thanks in advance to a great NG,

Steve


My first suggestion is that you ditch Dr. Watson. My experience is
that it is virtually useless for any sort of in depth diagnosis of a
problem, mostly because of the way it wraps excessive verbiage around
the error messages resulting in a bloated travesty that bears little
or no resemblance to the "genuine" error message. The reports from
Dr, Watson are especially useless for searching the Microsoft
Knowledge Base as all of the documentation there is based on the
"genuine" error message without the fluff and bumpf added by Dr.
Watson.

For example there are no articles whatever in the Microsoft Knowledge
Base that contain the phrase "Win32 Kernel core component". I
suspect that this error is actually an Invalid Page Fault of some sort
but without the "genuine" error message (culprit caused an Invalid
Page Fault in module victim [at error address]) it is impossible
to search for any known fixes for it.

If I were to write this information down at the time of the crash would
that help? I'm only suspecting the RAM because Dr. Watson said something
attempted to access memory that didn't exist.


Memload.exe is a program that is totally unknown to me and a Google
web search turns up only a few references to it, none of which work.
If it is part of some sort of "memory optimization" software then the
most charitable thing I can say about it is that it is pure
unadulterated crapware that is totally incapable of performing any
beneficial function for any computer under any circumstances. That
comment applies to all repeat all "memory optimization" programs.

Memload isn't an optimization program. It lists running tasks, more
complete
than msconfig-startup, and gives numbers on used and free memory and swap
file. It's pretty small and I just downloaded it to check memory usage.

Now for your memory usage question.

Memory exists to be used, and Windows will, by definition, attempt to
find some use, anything whatever that might potentially be of some
benefit rather that leaving the RAM sitting there idly going to rot.
And just as soon as some better use comes along for any of that RAM
then Windows will instantaneously drop the more trivial usages so as
to free up whatever amount is now required.

(If I were to really get wound up on this subject I would include some
additional comments such as "free memory is useless memory" and "if
you really want to have unused memory then take the RAM chips out of
the computer and mount them on the wall", but I will restrain myself,
at least for now.)

If you are only using 200 mb of RAM then I doubt that you are actually
*using* 100 mb of swap file. The swap file may be 100 mb in size, so
as to provide address space for the unused portions of memory
allocation requests, but I suspect that the actual usage, that is the
amount of active memory content that has been relocated from RAM to
the swap file, will be at or near zero.

I prefer using the System Monitor utility for checking most items,
other than CPU usage, with Windows 95/98/Me. In the current context
the relevant item is "Memory Manager - Swap File In Use". Use Edit -
Add to configure System Monitor to track specific items.

The system monitor says swapfile size is 120M and allocated memory is
283M,
also disk cache(whateve that is) is 83M. does that sound normal for
running
IE, OE, and the system monitor?

Also, I appreciate you taking the time to research my question on
google
and the knowledge base.


Steve

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

"Steve" wrote:


If I were to write this information down at the time of the crash would
that help? I'm only suspecting the RAM because Dr. Watson said something
attempted to access memory that didn't exist.

No. What would help is for you to ditch Doctor Watson completely and
just let the regular Windows error messages come through. When a
"This program has performed an illegal operation..." message pops up
click on the Details button and make note of the first part of the
Detailed Error Message, up to the word Registers:, and post that
information back here.

That detailed message will be in the following general format:

culprit caused a type of error in module victim [at error
address]

This detailed message information is what is needed to search the
Microsoft Knowledge Base and other technical reference sites for known
fixes for a specific error; and it is this information that Dr. Watson
totally obscures and hides. So please get rid of Dr. Watson, at least
until we resolve this issue.


Memload isn't an optimization program. It lists running tasks, more complete
than msconfig-startup, and gives numbers on used and free memory and swap
file. It's pretty small and I just downloaded it to check memory usage.

Okay. Thanks for the explanation. Can you provide the address of the
web site where you downloaded it? I would like to take a look at the
program myself.



The system monitor says swapfile size is 120M and allocated memory is 283M,
also disk cache(whateve that is) is 83M. does that sound normal for running
IE, OE, and the system monitor?

Also, I appreciate you taking the time to research my question on google
and the knowledge base.


The figures aren't too bad. Was the "swap file in use" value zero, as
I expected?

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

Memload isn't an optimization program. It lists running tasks, more
complete
than msconfig-startup, and gives numbers on used and free memory and swap
file. It's pretty small and I just downloaded it to check memory usage.

Okay. Thanks for the explanation. Can you provide the address of the
web site where you downloaded it? I would like to take a look at the
program myself.


This is where I downloadedMemload

http://files.webattack.com/localdl834/memload20.zip




The system monitor says swapfile size is 120M and allocated memory is
283M,
also disk cache(whateve that is) is 83M. does that sound normal for
running
IE, OE, and the system monitor?

Also, I appreciate you taking the time to research my question on
google
and the knowledge base.


The figures aren't too bad. Was the "swap file in use" value zero, as
I expected?

Yes, you were right, swapfile in use is zero. That's a cool program

I guess I'm going to have to find some other reason for the frequent
blue screens. I haven't written down the error messages but I read them (I
don't know what they mean) and they are not always the same.

Any suggestions what the reason could be?

Thanks a lot,

Steve



Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

Dr, Watson are especially useless for searching the Microsoft
Knowledge Base as all of the documentation there is based on the
"genuine" error message without the fluff and bumpf added by Dr.
Watson.

so what you are saying is that microsofts Watson program is a load
of crap and definately of no use to the average mum or dad!!?
was alex involved in its incepetion?
can you find the idiots who were? perhaps we can get a retraction
of the whole Watson saga.
I say all this because I too got sucked in after 'believeing' in Watson
after i got my second computer.......
why dont some of you msvp's get it pronounced as useless and
obsolete....... you've done it anyway in this post alone.

cons

Read:
Description of the Dr. Watson Tool in Windows 98.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=3D185837=20
http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=3D...on+98&btnG=3D=
Search&meta=3Dgroup%3Dmicrosoft.public.*
--------------
"Description of the Dr. Watson for Windows (Drwtsn32.exe) Tool"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=3D308538
every link you need for use in XP
--
mae

http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=3D...eDFHA.1524%40=
TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl
"pros-cons" wrote in message =
...

---snipped ------
| I say all this because I too got sucked in after 'believeing' in =
Watson
| after i got my second computer.......

Open Explorer to "C:\Windows\DrWatson", & click the ".WLG" files in
there until you find the one you speak of. R-Clk inside it's diagnosis
window at the Diagnosis tab, & "select all". Then, copy/paste it to a
post. I'm sure it says more than you've reported.


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

"Steve" wrote in message
...
| My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite
often
| lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
| original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with
old
| orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get
it like
| factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a
future
| project.
|
| My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
| logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:
|
| The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
| component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the
memory
| check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss
some
| problem with the RAM?
|
| Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200
MB of
| RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes
totals
| under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to
the
| bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used
or is
| it no good?
|
| Thanks in advance to a great NG,
|
| Steve
|
|