what is using all my RAM?

[lamensterms]

hey guys,
i was using adobe photoshop this evening and i tried to save something i was working on, but i got an error. it told me that "the task could not be performed becuase there isnt enough RAM".

so i though i would close all the other apps i was running (msn, media player and opera) and try again...to no avail. eventually i just had to exit without saving my work (not too much of a problem).

the MAIN worry im having now is that when im not doing anything on my PC,no open apps/etc, just the background ones (anti spyware, etc), im using 400mb+ of RAM. when i look in the task manager it tells me that the processes(in the processes tab) are using about 80mb. but in the performance tab it says im using 400mb+.

ive run a hijackthis scan. can someone please check the log out for me?

also are there any other task monitoring software out there that do similar things to the windows task manager?

what do you guys recommend i do?

im running XP with a 3gig P4 CPU and 1gig RAM.

any help is much appreciated.

cheers.

 

[Tedster]

get yourself mike lin's startup editor (free) and stop all the BS programs that you have autoloading upon startup.

task manager will show you what is running

 

[jonisaksson]

Hi,

I question whether you actually have a real problem.

It is always difficult to judge people’s knowledge on these forums so I am going to apologize straight off but when you say "on performance tab" are you talking about the number and graph that has PF above it? As that would of course be the page file or do you actually talk about the "physical memory (K)" section?

400 mb (memory +swap file) actually sounds low. Windows will try to load as much as it can and then place it in the swap file.

If it really is physical memory, again 400 mb isnt particularly high for Windows XP
Especially if you have a services running in the background (msn etc)

That you run out of memory with Photoshop is probably that you just have too little RAM in total. 1 GB is too little to do any proper work in Photoshop, at least in my experience.

Photoshop is notorious for using huge amount of memory.

 

[lamensterms]

ah..sorry about that...yes is is the page file "meter" that im looking at. im not sure if it is always around that number or not. but i think its the first time ive had this problem while using photoshop. photoshop is pretty demanding, and if the problem i had was just photoshop being photoshop..thats ok for now.

i was just hoping i didnt have something nasty working behind the scenes slowing my computer down.

thanks for all your help.