[Hivemind]What did you say?

[Ashwyn]

Ok, a side effect of the reboot is a loss of all my cookies.

 

[Skade]

Good luck with it DG, if you need some advice you can email me. My address is kane_leal@hotmail.com.

 

[barsoomcore]

Ok, a side effect of the reboot is a loss of all my cookies.

*gives Ashwyn a cookie.*

 

[Skade]

Ok, a side effect of the reboot is a loss of all my cookies.

So it was Cookie Monster Crash. I see. Not good when Sesame St characters invade your machine.

 

[Michael Morris]

That's the best way to learn. Memory could be the issue. But not a lack of it. I would think it more likely that you had a bad stick of memory. That's easy to work around. If the RAM you have been recently given is a known good product load with only that Ram in place.

More memory will speed up almost any system, to a point. If you have enough RAM that Windows doesn't have to use virtual memory (or use it rarely) it helps a lot, but after a point any memory is guilding the lily unless you have a LOT of programs open at the same time or use a true memory hog program like an art program (i.e. Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator) or a CAD program.

WIN 95/98 tops out at around 256 MB as far as getting the OS to stop using the Virtual memory file and run entirely in memory. Win NT/XP needs about 512 MB to get it's tail completely out of virtual memory.

Here's a quick test if you have memory issues. Start up a nice large program such as Word. If it takes more than 2 seconds to get up and running, you're using too much virutal memory.

Another thing that can slow a computer is drive fragmentation. This is especially critical if hard drive real estate is at a premium. It takes a long time to do this - the best way and time is to boot the computer into safe mode (this prevents TSR programs from interrupting the defragger) and start the process, then go to bed. The larger your hard drive the longer this takes.

Yet another trick that I find helps - if you can repartition your drive, create a partition SPECIFICIALLY set aside for virtual memory. 1 gig should do it. Whatever drive this is, set windows virtual memory file to point to this partition then don't put anything else there. It will speed up the computer slightly and more importantly it greatly slows the rate at which even a small hard drive gets fragmented.

 

[Dragongirl]

Good luck with it DG, if you need some advice you can email me. My address is kane_leal@hotmail.com.

Thanks Skade, I just need to mentally prepare myself to tackle it again.

 

[Ashwyn]

*gives Ashwyn a cookie.*

Thank you.

Originally posted by Skade
So it was Cookie Monster Crash. I see. Not good when Sesame St characters invade your machine.

I suppose it's better than Oscar the Grouch.

 

[Skade]

WIN 95/98 tops out at around 256 MB as far as getting the OS to stop using the Virtual memory file and run entirely in memory. Win NT/XP needs about 512 MB to get it's tail completely out of virtual memory.

Yet another trick that I find helps - if you can repartition your drive, create a partition SPECIFICIALLY set aside for virtual memory. 1 gig should do it. Whatever drive this is, set windows virtual memory file to point to this partition then don't put anything else there. It will speed up the computer slightly and more importantly it greatly slows the rate at which even a small hard drive gets fragmented.

I use both of these tactics. When I do not create the seperate partition I still use the Virtual Memory manager to specify the size of page file I always want used, usually 4 times the size of my ram.

 

[Skade]

Thank you.

I suppose it's better than Oscar the Grouch.

I don't know. He may be annoying, but have you seen all the stuff he has down in that can of his? You could have one Heck of a party.

 

[Dragongirl]

In a bad mood now, going to go for a while. See you later.