Free RAM

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Hello: Looks like a great forum and i hope to learn a lot from it and share whatever little i know. I have a laptop and desktop both running XP Home with 512MB of RAM. I find that the free RAM available on the desktop is much lower and when i checked the RAM used by processes (CTRL+ALT+DEL) - the same process (eg. explorer.exe) uses almost twice the amount of memory on the desktop than on the laptop! This is generally true for most other applications that are on both PC's. What can be the reason for more memory usage on my desktop and what can i do to reduce it??
 
a lot of things.
1. does your desktop have integrated graphics? If so, your motherboard "steals" available memory for graphics use.
2. Do you have more programs auto-loading? If so, use mike lin's startup editor, and stop unnecessary ones.
3. 512mb is the bare minimum RAM for use with XP and most programs to run EFFICIENTLY. Although it will run with 256MB (excruciatingly slow) and 512MB (not much better) it is best to use at least 1gb of ram (especially on a laptop).
 
First, forget about free RAM. Unused memory is wasted memory and a proper OS will always make use of all RAM on the machine.

Now, apps consuming more memory is much more interesting. The only xplanation is some configuration difference in either Windows or the program itself. For example, disabling themes reduces the memory use of all Windows GUI programs. Also, some programs are capable of adjusting their memory usage according to hints from the OS (like, minimizing a program will greatly reduces the used memory). So if the general swap+RAM usage profile is different on the other machine, Windows may give the programs different hints about how much memory they should use.
 
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