Strange loss of system resources

Etal wrote in
:

thanatoid wrote:

SNIP

And the fact you have to use THE MOUSE to go back or
forward is just ///unbelievable///.

If the last sentence is about Firefox 2.0.0.x, try
[Alt]+[LeftArrow] and [Alt]+[RightArrow].

Thank you VERY much. Browsers (except Opera) are so elementary,
and I found FFox so simplistic, it never even occurred to me to
look in the help file. Years ago I used to read entire 300 page
manuals before I used a program.

Thanks again.



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

Etal wrote in
:

thanatoid wrote:

SNIP

And the fact you have to use THE MOUSE to go back or
forward is just ///unbelievable///.

If the last sentence is about Firefox 2.0.0.x, try
[Alt]+[LeftArrow] and [Alt]+[RightArrow].

Thank you VERY much. Browsers (except Opera) are so elementary,
and I found FFox so simplistic, it never even occurred to me to
look in the help file. Years ago I used to read entire 300 page
manuals before I used a program.

Thanks again.



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

"Buffalo" wrote in
:

SNIP

Just for grins,
1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0 (This set to one
sometimes helped in game playing)\
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize.

Try it, it is SO easy to change back.
Remember,all 'free ram' programs use ram and resources.
Who knows, one of the above 3 just might help.
Buffalo

Thanks for the "doable" suggestion.

Well, I conducted the tests yesterday, and here are the results:

1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize

(Sys res. readings from Resource Meter)

3 ABOVE DONE "NORMAL" (IE NONE OF THE 3 DONE)

after boot:
86, 86, 88 85, 86, 85

ADSL network log on
forgot to check 81, 81, 81

after :30 min of myspace
68, 73, 68 73, 73, 75 (a few diff sites)

after 1:00 hr of myspace, 4 browser windows open
60, 73, 60 59, 59, 65

after 1:30 hr of myspace, 3 windows open, 2 browsers, XNews and
2 other small things
65, 65, 65 61, 61, 65

after 1:45, 1 window open and 2 small progs
69, 69, 75 70, 70, 72

almost 2 hrs, download manager open and a few basic windows in
left column,
nothing open in right column
69, 69, 80 76, 76, 78

Swapfile, in spite of removing the upper limit, has remained at
200 MB and 0 of it has been used (which is why it didn't get
bigger, I imagine ;-)

Basically, with minor variations in the order of 5%-10% which I
would consider as insignificant, I do not see much difference. I
either didn't push the machine hard enough (I didn't open 10
FFox and 10 Opera windows) or I was lucky - because 1 or 2
windows will sometimes bring me down to under 20%, but as you
see, I never even got below 55% on any of the 3, and I used
myspace (which is the biggest bloat I could think of) for the
test!

Another mystery is whether the "unload DLL's" registry entry has
ANYthing to do with this. Shouldn't have, but MAY have. I am
doing this test now (I turned the "always unload" to OFF) as the
next and final one. I am at 57, 57, 69, and I only have Xnews
and 3 tiny utils open. There may be something going on here...

Sigh.

I /really/ appreciate your patience and help.

(And I really hope I didn't offend you with that statement about
nobody needing XP or Vista...
Just realized my current signature is singularly appropriate to
that particular incident !!!)

t.

"Buffalo" wrote in
:

SNIP

Just for grins,
1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0 (This set to one
sometimes helped in game playing)\
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize.

Try it, it is SO easy to change back.
Remember,all 'free ram' programs use ram and resources.
Who knows, one of the above 3 just might help.
Buffalo

Thanks for the "doable" suggestion.

Well, I conducted the tests yesterday, and here are the results:

1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize

(Sys res. readings from Resource Meter)

3 ABOVE DONE "NORMAL" (IE NONE OF THE 3 DONE)

after boot:
86, 86, 88 85, 86, 85

ADSL network log on
forgot to check 81, 81, 81

after :30 min of myspace
68, 73, 68 73, 73, 75 (a few diff sites)

after 1:00 hr of myspace, 4 browser windows open
60, 73, 60 59, 59, 65

after 1:30 hr of myspace, 3 windows open, 2 browsers, XNews and
2 other small things
65, 65, 65 61, 61, 65

after 1:45, 1 window open and 2 small progs
69, 69, 75 70, 70, 72

almost 2 hrs, download manager open and a few basic windows in
left column,
nothing open in right column
69, 69, 80 76, 76, 78

Swapfile, in spite of removing the upper limit, has remained at
200 MB and 0 of it has been used (which is why it didn't get
bigger, I imagine ;-)

Basically, with minor variations in the order of 5%-10% which I
would consider as insignificant, I do not see much difference. I
either didn't push the machine hard enough (I didn't open 10
FFox and 10 Opera windows) or I was lucky - because 1 or 2
windows will sometimes bring me down to under 20%, but as you
see, I never even got below 55% on any of the 3, and I used
myspace (which is the biggest bloat I could think of) for the
test!

Another mystery is whether the "unload DLL's" registry entry has
ANYthing to do with this. Shouldn't have, but MAY have. I am
doing this test now (I turned the "always unload" to OFF) as the
next and final one. I am at 57, 57, 69, and I only have Xnews
and 3 tiny utils open. There may be something going on here...

Sigh.

I /really/ appreciate your patience and help.

(And I really hope I didn't offend you with that statement about
nobody needing XP or Vista...
Just realized my current signature is singularly appropriate to
that particular incident !!!)

t.

"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...

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...

• 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 ;-)

| 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...

| 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 :-)

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.

| 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.

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.

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.

| 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.

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.

| 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.

| 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 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!!!)

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...

| 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.

| 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...

| 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.

| (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 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.

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...

| 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.

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.

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.

Thanks /again/!
t.

"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...

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...

• 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 ;-)

| 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...

| 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 :-)

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.

| 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.

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.

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.

| 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.

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.

| 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.

| 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 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!!!)

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...

| 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.

| 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...

| 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.

| (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 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.

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...

| 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.

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.

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.

Thanks /again/!
t.

Franc Zabkar wrote in
news
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:52:13 +0100, Etal
put finger to keyboard
and composed:

thanatoid wrote:

I really dislike some of the FFox "features" (or lack of
them) but OTOH, Opera 8.01 doesn't have "save page with
images" as 7.23 did! In fact I tried 7.54 as well and IT
was VERY different from 7.23 as well. I find it really
peculiar that they change the appearance and options and
functionality so much... Some day I might try 5.12...
When it's a slow day... But next time I do an Acronis
restore, I think I'll reinstall 7.23. As much as I
/really/ hate having THREE browsers when ONE should be
enough, FFox does swf/flv very nicely. But its
structural/directory design is MOST unpleasant.

And the fact you have to use THE MOUSE to go back or
forward is just ///unbelievable///.

If the last sentence is about Firefox 2.0.0.x, try
[Alt]+[LeftArrow] and [Alt]+[RightArrow].

Opera has the same shortcut keys:
http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/nomouse/

"Z and Alt+Left go back in history. X and Alt+Right go
forward."

That should be /or/ not /and/ - for the 3 versions I have used,
anyway. Those Norwegians... ;-)

I use just the z and the x do it, like in Ob1. Although I
suppose adding Alt is not the end of the world.

Furthermore, it is actually easier in Opera to do this with
the mouse. To go back, hold down the right button on your
mouse and then press the left button. To go forward, hold
down the left button and then press the right button.

You know, I for some reason I am terrified of pressing both
mouse buttons at the same time. But I might try that...

(...)

WOW. I did, and nothing blew up. And it IS easier, since
(unfortunately) it is necessary to have the hand on the mouse at
all times while webbing...

Thanks for sharing your exceptional knowledge, as usual.

t.

Franc Zabkar wrote in
news
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:52:13 +0100, Etal
put finger to keyboard
and composed:

thanatoid wrote:

I really dislike some of the FFox "features" (or lack of
them) but OTOH, Opera 8.01 doesn't have "save page with
images" as 7.23 did! In fact I tried 7.54 as well and IT
was VERY different from 7.23 as well. I find it really
peculiar that they change the appearance and options and
functionality so much... Some day I might try 5.12...
When it's a slow day... But next time I do an Acronis
restore, I think I'll reinstall 7.23. As much as I
/really/ hate having THREE browsers when ONE should be
enough, FFox does swf/flv very nicely. But its
structural/directory design is MOST unpleasant.

And the fact you have to use THE MOUSE to go back or
forward is just ///unbelievable///.

If the last sentence is about Firefox 2.0.0.x, try
[Alt]+[LeftArrow] and [Alt]+[RightArrow].

Opera has the same shortcut keys:
http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/nomouse/

"Z and Alt+Left go back in history. X and Alt+Right go
forward."

That should be /or/ not /and/ - for the 3 versions I have used,
anyway. Those Norwegians... ;-)

I use just the z and the x do it, like in Ob1. Although I
suppose adding Alt is not the end of the world.

Furthermore, it is actually easier in Opera to do this with
the mouse. To go back, hold down the right button on your
mouse and then press the left button. To go forward, hold
down the left button and then press the right button.

You know, I for some reason I am terrified of pressing both
mouse buttons at the same time. But I might try that...

(...)

WOW. I did, and nothing blew up. And it IS easier, since
(unfortunately) it is necessary to have the hand on the mouse at
all times while webbing...

Thanks for sharing your exceptional knowledge, as usual.

t.

thanatoid wrote:
"Buffalo" wrote in
:

SNIP

Just for grins,
1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0 (This set to one
sometimes helped in game playing)\
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize.

Try it, it is SO easy to change back.
Remember,all 'free ram' programs use ram and resources.
Who knows, one of the above 3 just might help.
Buffalo

Thanks for the "doable" suggestion.

Well, I conducted the tests yesterday, and here are the results:

1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize

(Sys res. readings from Resource Meter)

3 ABOVE DONE "NORMAL" (IE NONE OF THE 3 DONE)

after boot:
86, 86, 88 85, 86, 85

ADSL network log on
forgot to check 81, 81, 81

after :30 min of myspace
68, 73, 68 73, 73, 75 (a few diff sites)

after 1:00 hr of myspace, 4 browser windows open
60, 73, 60 59, 59, 65

after 1:30 hr of myspace, 3 windows open, 2 browsers, XNews and
2 other small things
65, 65, 65 61, 61, 65

after 1:45, 1 window open and 2 small progs
69, 69, 75 70, 70, 72

almost 2 hrs, download manager open and a few basic windows in
left column,
nothing open in right column
69, 69, 80 76, 76, 78

Swapfile, in spite of removing the upper limit, has remained at
200 MB and 0 of it has been used (which is why it didn't get
bigger, I imagine ;-)

Basically, with minor variations in the order of 5%-10% which I
would consider as insignificant, I do not see much difference. I
either didn't push the machine hard enough (I didn't open 10
FFox and 10 Opera windows) or I was lucky - because 1 or 2
windows will sometimes bring me down to under 20%, but as you
see, I never even got below 55% on any of the 3, and I used
myspace (which is the biggest bloat I could think of) for the
test!

Another mystery is whether the "unload DLL's" registry entry has
ANYthing to do with this. Shouldn't have, but MAY have. I am
doing this test now (I turned the "always unload" to OFF) as the
next and final one. I am at 57, 57, 69, and I only have Xnews
and 3 tiny utils open. There may be something going on here...

Sigh.

I /really/ appreciate your patience and help.

(And I really hope I didn't offend you with that statement about
nobody needing XP or Vista...
Just realized my current signature is singularly appropriate to
that particular incident !!!)

t.
Now try it with ConservativeSwapFile set to one and turn off your Free Ram
program and let Windows manage your swapfile.
Don't forget to reboot. (AFAIK, the CSF above set to one stops Windows from
using the swap file until all physical memory is used up)
Then you might leave the above and set the min-max limits the same again for
you swap file and reboot.
Who knows, something may even work. At least you won't get bored.
Buffalo

thanatoid wrote:
"Buffalo" wrote in
:

SNIP

Just for grins,
1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0 (This set to one
sometimes helped in game playing)\
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize.

Try it, it is SO easy to change back.
Remember,all 'free ram' programs use ram and resources.
Who knows, one of the above 3 just might help.
Buffalo

Thanks for the "doable" suggestion.

Well, I conducted the tests yesterday, and here are the results:

1)turn OFF your "FreeRAM XP Pro 1.40" program
2)Set ConservativeSwapFileUsage to 0
3)Remove your limits on MaxPagingFileSize

(Sys res. readings from Resource Meter)

3 ABOVE DONE "NORMAL" (IE NONE OF THE 3 DONE)

after boot:
86, 86, 88 85, 86, 85

ADSL network log on
forgot to check 81, 81, 81

after :30 min of myspace
68, 73, 68 73, 73, 75 (a few diff sites)

after 1:00 hr of myspace, 4 browser windows open
60, 73, 60 59, 59, 65

after 1:30 hr of myspace, 3 windows open, 2 browsers, XNews and
2 other small things
65, 65, 65 61, 61, 65

after 1:45, 1 window open and 2 small progs
69, 69, 75 70, 70, 72

almost 2 hrs, download manager open and a few basic windows in
left column,
nothing open in right column
69, 69, 80 76, 76, 78

Swapfile, in spite of removing the upper limit, has remained at
200 MB and 0 of it has been used (which is why it didn't get
bigger, I imagine ;-)

Basically, with minor variations in the order of 5%-10% which I
would consider as insignificant, I do not see much difference. I
either didn't push the machine hard enough (I didn't open 10
FFox and 10 Opera windows) or I was lucky - because 1 or 2
windows will sometimes bring me down to under 20%, but as you
see, I never even got below 55% on any of the 3, and I used
myspace (which is the biggest bloat I could think of) for the
test!

Another mystery is whether the "unload DLL's" registry entry has
ANYthing to do with this. Shouldn't have, but MAY have. I am
doing this test now (I turned the "always unload" to OFF) as the
next and final one. I am at 57, 57, 69, and I only have Xnews
and 3 tiny utils open. There may be something going on here...

Sigh.

I /really/ appreciate your patience and help.

(And I really hope I didn't offend you with that statement about
nobody needing XP or Vista...
Just realized my current signature is singularly appropriate to
that particular incident !!!)

t.
Now try it with ConservativeSwapFile set to one and turn off your Free Ram
program and let Windows manage your swapfile.
Don't forget to reboot. (AFAIK, the CSF above set to one stops Windows from
using the swap file until all physical memory is used up)
Then you might leave the above and set the min-max limits the same again for
you swap file and reboot.
Who knows, something may even work. At least you won't get bored.
Buffalo