Memory hole in my PC...need help...please

[Mighty Favog]

I know this is off topic but I have a better chance getting some answers here than on the PC boards.

I have a 5+ year old Dell XPS-T600 with a PIII and 768 megs of RAM using Win 98SE and a 40gig HD.

Over last 6 months or so I've noticed the hard drive moving with out me giving it an instruction to anything that would require it. I checked the System Monitor and over the course of about an hour after after booting it up I see the Unused Physical Memory slowly decreasing down to about 10 megs. Now, there is no way heck that I am running any program(s) in the background that would chew up that much memory.

I asked someone in my family and he said it was a "memory hole". O.k. the term sounds about right but how do I find out how to remedy this big sucking sound?

I've ran Scan Disk, Nortons System Works 2004 (everything it does), defragged, ran Ad-Aware, stopped all un-needed programs from running in the background (through a program called Code Stuff Sarter) and just short or reformatted the HD (which I DON'T want to do).

Any clues??

Muchos gratas!!

[Colin]

Hole in RAM! Hah, hah, that is a good one. Quite unlikely, in my opinion, even on a PC that old. Plus this is easy to check. When the system cold boots, watch the RAM test and see how much RAM checks out. Ill bet it is close to 768MB. Many other things are probably contributing to the disk running slow:

First, you are running all sorts of background services that you dont know about

Second your hard disk is probably half full and the PC is running a lot slower and performing indexing services

Third, your Operating System is long past due. Upgrade to at least Win2000. It is a much better performer for PCs than the old 98 version. I would do it by backing up all your data (only data) and wiping clean the hard drive and starting with a clean install. This will eliminate all of the services you are running in the background. It will also allow you to run NTFS, which is much better HD format.

Your dont want to re-format your HD, because you do NOT have proper back-up for all of your data. Yet, you should. You can get an external Iomega 80GB, 7200RPM, External USB Hard Drive for $140 at CompUSA, which includes Iomega Automatic Backup and Symantec® Norton Ghost software. The drive connects through your USB port (if you have one). With the back-up software can schedule hourly back-ups of all data and changes on your 40GB drive onto this second drive.

In the meantime, turn off any unused service running in your system tray when you boot up, back-up your data and run any Disk Clean-up or defrag utilities. After you upgrade your OS, copy the data back onto the primary drive.

[Thors1982]

If it is a "memory hole", or as I learned it in school "memory leak". It isn't in your OS or your main software however, there have been many many cases where video games have memory leaks. So it is very possible that a a program your running has one.... although over an hour increasing to 700 megs is an INSANE leak.... So I doubt that is the problem.

I would make sure you have very few programs loading at boot up. Only the necessary ones for windows and maybe 1-3 that you use constantly.

If you do not know how to do that I am sure I can tell you or find a website or others on the board could help you.... But, I have to run to Numerical Methods Class :-(

Oh, and many many people recommend formatting the hard drive once a year to clean up a lot of the crude that gets on your hard drive. Registry information, files that don't get deleted on uninstalls, temp files. Whatever it may be. I usually say 2-3 years just cause for the average user its a pain in the **** to backup/reformat :-)

[m00n]

Never heard of a memory hole and I work in the industry as a software engineer. Memeory leaks yes, memory holes? No. I'm not sayhing they don't exist, just that I have never heard of one.

How long is it between the time you reboot and the time you notice all this memory loss? What apps are you running? I know that Photoshop is a memory hog and they advise you kill it at least once a day, if not kill it and reboot.

You have done just abot everything I would have done up to this point. One thing I would do different than that Colin is, Colin suggested Windows2000, personally I would install Windows XP. But that's me.

[Olorin]

Tom,

It sounds to me like Thors and m00n are on the right track with the memory leak idea. Something is running in the background, and it sounds like it's making periodic requests for memory, then not releasing the memory. It could be anything that has a periodic behavior -- your email client, antivirus software, Quicken updater running in your tray, stock ticker program, etc. Quicktime, RealPlayer, Roxio CD burning software, and others put a metric buttload of stuff in memory that just sits there and waits for something to happen.

I'd try to isolate it by stopping as many programs as you comfortably can. Almost anything in the tray can be safely turned off. You might want to unplug from the 'net before you disable your antivirus software -- better safe and all that. Also be sure you've got the latest revisions on the stuff you use. Sometimes people publish software that has no bugs at all, honest, yet in the next rev the memory leaks and odd crashes are gone.

Hope this helps.

Ed

[Mighty Favog]

O.k. So far I did the easy things of updating the firmwares on the programs sitting in the system tray. There aren't many, just Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4, AtomTime, Norton's System works 2004 with Firewall & The Weather Channel. I was thinking the Weather Channell might be it because it updates about every 10-15 minutes or so and that's about the same interval for the HD movement(s). The nice thing about the frequent updates is so my modem (ADSL) doesn't get kicked off the net for timing out. The WC web site has the same version number os what I'm using but I uninstalled and reinstalled it anyway. AtomTime only updates about every 3 hours so I know that's not it. There were updates available for Adaptec's (o.k. Roxio) Easy CD Creator 4 and Direct CD so I installed those as well.

It's too late to wait and check them now so I'll keep and eye on it tomorrow.

I'll let ya'll know what happens.

Thanks!

I almost tried to do a print screen of my start-up programs screen but like I said, it's too late right now.......

[Colin]

The home version of WinXP does NOT have a back-up utility, which is a major rip-off and outrage (every OS should automatically set-up a data back-up routine for all users). I really like WinXP Pro, but it requires registration and may require expensive updates. The copy protection in Win2000 is less restrictive and cracked copies should be easier to obtain. Either way, I felt (NOT proved) that my old PCs ran much better with either Win2000 or XP, even with 128MB RAM. With 768MB RAM, I would certainly think a newer OS handles large RAM better. Either way, old PCs do need to be cleaned out and reformatted every once in while.

For an old machine, I think all those frequent updates are really taxing. I would run them maybe once a week, or once a day, NOT every few minutes. If the Weather channel is downloading and archiving large pics or maps, that would eat up tons of RAM, look at your Task manager and see what is using up the CPU processes and the RAM. Also make sure you are shutting down at least weekly, if NOT nightly to clear all sub-routines out of RAM.

I had this same problem with my old PCs (that is all I buy) and the only solution was to reformat the HD with the new OS.

[chops]

The first thing you have to do is get rid of that crappy Norton junk. All that program is, is a memory and CPU hog. It also wants to take over control of your whole machine. It absolutely sucks, is highly over-rated, slows down your whole machine, and you could not pay me to even install it on any of my computers!

I use Avast! on all my machines and even the ones at work! It updates the virus list once a day, updates the actual software every one to two weeks, and is totally free. (the Home Edition only). It keeps an eye on your in-coming and out-going email, you web browser wether it be IE, Netscape, Opera, etc, and the various instant messenger services. Also, you can have it scan your whole system any time you want, manually or automatically. The best part about it, other than the fact it's FREE, it has also been said in several PC mags that it is better than either Norton or Mcefee!! Oh yeah, it requires very low memory usage and CPU cycles. You can't beat that!! You can find it at.... www.downloads.com

The next thing I would do is disable that Roxio software from starting up on boot. It is not needed. Same goes for the WC program. The AtomTime I don't see a need for either, but I don't see it as the problem either.

I can almost guarantee that if you ditch that stupid Norton software, you will gain back most of your memory and your computer will run much faster. Just make sure that if you do uninstall it, make sure you get all the little bits and peices of junk it scatters in your system. You'll find a bunch of shared files and folders, upload utilites, shortcuts, notification programs and other junk all over the place! Like I said before, Norton trys to take over your computer.

I hope this helps some.

[Mighty Favog]

Well, I did notice a slow down after I installed the Anti-Spam program that came bundled with System Works 2004. I had the 2002 version and it ran just fine. The 04 version just has those annoying pop-ups for thr firewall even though I told it to permit access.

I'll take off the Anti-Spam program tonight and see what happens.

[Thors1982]

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On 5/4/2004 8:44:19 AM Colin wrote:

look at your Task manager and see what is using up the CPU processes and the RAM. Also make sure you are shutting down at least weekly, if NOT nightly to clear all sub-routines out of RAM.

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Great Idea, should have thought of it myself. However, I can't remember how to do that on a 98 system :-/ sorry, its been a while.

But, with 768 ram he shouldn't have to shut down nightly. I leave my comp on and only restart when I notice slowdowns or weekly is pretty good. I play games that I notice memory leaks and I still don't bother shutting down nightly, afterall leaving a system on 24/7 is much better for it than shutting down everynight.

[Marvel]

Unfortunately, even Microsoft's own programmers don't write programs the way they say you are supposed to. Many programs do not quit by terminating and deallocating the memory they used, they just terminate. Also, check out this link at MS, which details large amounts of memory with Win98:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q304943

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/r1005804448

The second article is very helpful in explaining things. You need to read them both.

Marvel

[WMcD]

I don't have the info here. Perhaps someone else can give you the technique. And you might be better served going to the computer section.

The below may show my ignorance.

Part of the issue is that an application program is not one program. Rather, it is a group of executable files and data files. Some or all may be loaded at one time or another.

It is my understanding that the problem arises when you install more and more software programs. At least some of those have short routines (executable files) loaded into RAM when you boot (and preventing this is the cure). Hence they eat up RAM (random accesses transistor memory), even if you're not running them.

More specifically, you are putting application programs on the hard disk and have plenty of room in reserve on the hard disk. And you think they can not cause a problem with RAM when you have not clicked on an icon to load them. But that is not the full story. If you've installed 13 programs on the hard disk, each may demand 2 Meg or more of RAM at start up. Even printer accessories can do this.

The other part of the problem how the operating system copes with the fact that at start up, some of the RAM has been taken over by the short routines loaded for the 13 programs at start up. Hence there is less free RAM. You may have 100 Meg of RAM, but much of it is taken over at start up by applications you are not running.

Generally, an application which is actually running would like to take over a chunk of available RAM and put execution and data files there for quick access. If there is little room available, it will not load them into RAM, but rather, access them from the hard disk when necessary.

This leads to a situation where a single application, even running alone, bogs down and has to make repeated calls to the hard disk for program data.

Some people read this as a defraging problem. It seems that disk access is slow. Or "my 'old' computer is slow." Not so.

When you bought the computer, there were few applications loaded. The intital applications ran fast because others hadn't taken over RAM at start up. A given application could find a big chunk of RAM to run without accessing the hard drive. Now, because of more applications hogging RAM at start up, it is an aged weakling.

The solution is to access the start up instruction so that non running programs don't hog valuable RAM. I'll have to find Jim Coats' article on how to do this. But someone here will know too.

There is also software bloat. If you bought a machine with Win 98 and Office 97 and 28 meg of RAM, they ran okay. Howevever, later upgrades demand more and more RAM. Hence software upgrades lead to worse performance.

Gil

[Griffinator]

My suggestion:

1) Get rid of Norton - uninstall it and never look back.

2) Download and install Spybot S&D (http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download) - it's a freeware spyware remover. Most memory leaks are caused by these programs which are constantly monitoring your keystrokes and internet activity and sending the info off to some server.

To prevent viruses....

3) Install a firewall (I use ZoneAlarm Pro with great success)

4) Sign up for a free web-based e-mail account (just do a google search, there are thousands of them) and stop using outlook express.

Finally, to manage leaks more effectively...

5) Go to www.Analogx.com and download their free tool MaxMem (in the system utilities section) - great for win9x machines, not recommended for 2k/XP - all it does is periodically check RAM usage and clears any RAM associated with processes not currently operating. It's basically what kept my little Cyrix MII-333 (W98) running long after it had outlived its usefulness.

Hope this helps!

[Mighty Favog]

Gil,

I see what your saying and I do have to say I did (and once in a while still do) go through the msconfig utility and uncheck some of teh memory hogs that don't need to be running in the background. Microsoft Office comes to mind as well as does Quicktime and/or Real Player. It used ot be when I whould uncheck these programs (so they don't load on bootup) they whould re-check themselves and load on boot-up anyway. Then I found something called Code Stuf Sarter by Lion free off the net. It works great! It allows you to not only uncheck a program on startup but delete it completely from the possible choices in the startup program list. Of course if you use choose to use the program that was removed from the list in the course of your day then it will just reappear in the list and gets reloaded anyway next bootup. For some reason this doesn't happen with MS Office (I use Office 2000). But I like it anyway.

The programs I've loaded since I've noticed this happening was the software for my digital camera (Canon S50) and the reloading of System Works '04 after a bad load. I had to do a manual un-install of SystemWorks (YUK!!!) twice and even sat with tech support at Norton's and the tech there confirmed when all the files where removed (mainly registries). Before I had to do all that I hadn't loaded the Anti-Span program from the bundle, but this last time I did. So that's what I'mm gonna look at when I can (last night I mowed the back yard and didn't even feel like turning on the PC when I was done).

I'll keep plugging away at it till it's fixed but for now I really don't want to do anything drastic. As was said before, it could just be number of total programs loaded on this machine. There are quite a few (I like to be Mr. Universal and ready for anything) so I'll see what it is I can get rid of. MS Works (97?) comes to mind right now.

[Mighty Favog]

O.k. the Weather Channel wasn't it nor the Anti-Spam from Norton. How do I find the Task Manager anyway? All I can find is the Task Monitor and the System Monitor....