Low Physical Memory

[chimmychunga]

My computer is running slowly and in system infromation it usually says i have from 20-40mb of physical memory free. I have no extra items running in the tray thing in the bottom right corner just norton antivirus, spy sweeper, sound effect and sometimes msn messenger. I went in to tun msconfig and foud a list of startup progams and i have no extra ones running. I dont have any extra programs running. My total physical memory is 256 Mb. So how do i free some memory up?

 

[zephead]

by default, windows sets up a system-managed amount of virtual memory on your hard drive. did you or anyone else turn this off? what version fo windows do you have? this can be found by pressing the windows key and pause/break briefly, or by typing winver at a command prompt.

 

[chimmychunga]

I have windows version 5.1 and i have changed the memory set for vitural memory but a friend told me what to set it at.

 

[zephead]

you need to make sure that your pagefile is set to 'system managed size'. you cna do this by pressing the windows key and pause/break, selecting the advanced tab. then click the button labeled settings and select the tab labeled advanced. near the botton you should see the virtual memory pagefile sizes. you then can click on the change button and set your pagefile to a system managed size. a successful change will go into effect after you restart.

 

[chimmychunga]

k i did that but i checked the phyiscal memory and it was 13 mb avialble i have tried download one ram freer things but they dont work to good you have to run like everytime you do anything.

 

[zephead]

how many processes do you have running, under normal circumstances? 256Mb of ram isn't a whole lot, but should be sufficient to run windows XP. it's likely that you have unnessecary apps running in the background, some of them may be malicious. do you keep NAV up to date and scan every week or so?

 

[chimmychunga]

there are quite a few process runing but nothing adds up to 200mb. My friend got me to check that and there was nothing in thre that was using alot. My nav is always updated and i scan every day. i also have ad-ware and spysweeper that i use to scan every day. Norton does pick up a ad thing callled p2p i know it came on when i downloaded Kazza (dealeted a long time ago). is there any way i can show you what process i have running?

 

[Tedster]

just go get some more memory. 256MB is very little for XP.
plus memory is cheap nowadays. Make sure it is the same type as the memory you have now.

 

[chimmychunga]

just go get some more memory. 256MB is very little for XP.
plus memory is cheap nowadays. Make sure it is the same type as the memory you have now.

How do i find out what kind of memory i have. I have considered buying more because some of the stuff i wanted to do required more memory. About ho much would it be to buy?

 

[zephead]

download and run cpu-z. this will give you info on your cpu, motherboard, vide o interface, and most importantly your ram config. make sure you mention the speed of your ram and your chipset type.

 

[chimmychunga]

where do i find ram speed and chipset type

 

[Tedster]

go to www.crucial.com and input your model # or use their memory finder tool :angel:

 

[chimmychunga]

it sasy it cant find a mmory upgrade gor my model

 

[Tedster]

what is the make and model for your system?

 

[zephead]

you need to look under the memory, spd, and mainboard tabs

 

[chimmychunga]

what is the make and model for your system?

my comp is made by intel but my mother board is made by senix