ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Re: Computers and the Internet Message No Memory Comes Up Often?

msinfo32 is another helpful file, you run in the same way msconfig. You will not find out about these files in any microsoft booklets for windows, why? I don't know maybe they think we will just be confused.

You know what the say about microsoft..
"if microsoft made a shop vac....it would be the only thing they made that did not suck."

Not sure if this is still applies in XP, but Windows has a System Information utility as well: Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Information.

You may find that it's a certain piece of software that is reserving great chunks of memory for itself and not releasing them, as suggested above.

I had a similar problem with very slow operation at times and then crashes with "No memory." I finally traced it to a little utility I was using (RAM audio to WAV file converter) that was hogging every scrap of RAM it could find and not relinquishing it upon termination.

I tried all of the files and they all worked, but I am not sure about which files I can turn off without further problems?

If I disable all will the machine still work?

you can turn off anything you want under the "startup" tab, as a example my humble pc has 31 items in this area all but 8 are disable. Some items are hard to guess at what they do... example "dumprept 0-okl" on my machine, I still do not know what it for but I left it off.

The best way to think about this is like a panel in a large building. Some breakers have very strange labels, sometimes the best way to find out what they do is to turn then off and see what happens. ( If the building is occupied at the time our shop refers to this as the "scream test" ...). Others you can tell by there names. Its kind of like that with some programs.

Any other tabs you must be careful on what you remove. Under services I have turn off -uninterruptible power supply ( don't have one),wireless zero config ( I'm all hard wired), x10 device network services ( friend said "hackers like this one on" ) Automatic update ( I hate microsoft patches on patches that cause crashes ) and messenger ( anti spam ).

Sometimes with windows it best to blow it away and reinstall new. I do this about 2 times a year. A neat little trick to this is to install windows on a small drive or a partition of about 20 gig, save any programs you like on some other dive, install all programs on a different drive ( I use "d" and copy all programs and drivers I use on "e" for later quick install.) After I format "C" I install windows and my internet services I then go to windows update and let in install the most up to date files and drivers (I'm safe behind my hardware fire-wall for now ). After that I go to "e" drive and install my fire-wall anti virus programs ( this way they will not react to windows updates). I do not return to windows update for any other patches. Doing this I can finish with a complete windows re-install in a short time, and with no stress.

I hope this helps







[This message has been edited by dfe (edited 06-10-2004).]