Free up memory??? - what can I do

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

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17 Jan 2006
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I’m after some advice and help, and having done some searching, I can’t find quite what I’m looking for.

I’m trying to free up as much memory as I can because I’ve only got 512MB of PC2700 DDR RAM and even when I have nothing running on my computer I only have about 200MB of free memory, and I’m not quite sure how I can free some more up.

Currently in my system tray I have:

Creative disc detector:
I can’t find anyway of disabling this. I’ve tried searching the net but all I’ve found says to right click on the icon, select properties then unclick enable. However when I right click and select properties, nothing happens.

Norton Antivirus
I have this disabled but it still sits there in my tray, I assume because I still have it set to scan my emails.

Nvidia nView
This is quite useful I suppose though I don’t ever really change my screen res so if I could get rid of it from the tray to free up a bit memory I would.

Intel something or other
This is related to my network card and is fairly useful to check my network connection etc so I happy leaving it there.

That’s all I have in the tray, but when I open up Task Manager and look at the processes that are running, there are masses of them!!!

I’ve tried disabling some of them from the startup tab of the system info dialog, but they just keep coming back..

I’d post up the full list of them but I’m at work and although I emailed the list to myself here, the email has not arrived. I shall add the list when I get home later, but in the meantime does anyone have any ideas about how I can free up any memory.

I realise that really I could do with more RAM and I fully intend to purchase some more but before I do I want to remove anything that I don’t need running in the first place.

My system specs are:
P4 2.8Ghz
512MB PC2700DDR
BFG 7800GS OC AGP
80gig HDD & 120gig HDD
DVDrom
DVDRW
Pinnacle Systems Studio DC10+ video capture card
Soundblaster Live 5.1


Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.

Valve
 
My processes

Here are the processes I have running when I have nothing else open (ok in this example I have internet explorer and Photoshop but nothing else.

I don't know what most of them are but serveral I have tried to disable from the System config utility but they just come back.

processes.jpg


any help would be much appreciated

Valve
 
38 doesnt seem ott... specially since most of the ones in caps are norton. 250isht too bad for start up, but if you kill norton u'd prolly get like 50mb back.
Ultimatly, i'd suggest getting another stick of 512mb... for PC2700 it isnt gonna cost too much. 1gb is defo a sweet spot atm.
 
Ouch 38 processes!? My system boots to 25 with msn, Nod32, Sygate and ATI Tray tools in the task bar.

Id clear out your system, start with a fresh install and use Nod32 or Kaspersky instead of Norton. Also worth checking are the services running on your machine. MS thinks that we need loads of services running when in actual fact you can get away with disabling pretty much all of them. Disabling the ones you don't need will free up some RAM and also in some cases make your system more secure (remote registry access for example! Because I want remote users to be able to edit my registry...)
 
best way to free mem is to do a fresh install, not a good choice at every boot tho :p

system info tag? do you mean msconfig? if so ive never had a problem with programs reenabling themselves

possibly worth a try is if you have your system set to use more memory for 'system' use or for programs, default is programs and is best with limited memory

you do seem to have a few non need processes running, mostly soundcard related by the look of it cthelper for a start soundman as well

i assume you are running xp with the eye candy turned down by the look of it windows 2000 would prob save more memory

if you wanna get really anal nlite might be worth a look to trim down windows
 
Thanks for the help guys, I've gone through my list of processes and found one or two which I can probably get rid of.

I'm planning on getting one 512MB stick shortly then when I've got a bit more money available get mysaelf another 512mb stick to give myself 1.5gb

The memory I currently have is PC2700 running at 166mzh, is this DDR333 RAM??

If I was to buy a single stick to put with this, would it matter that it was not the same make, just so long as it is the same speed memory???

Valve
 
processes8lq.png

The Crown's mine!

PC2700 768MB RAM, IBM Thinkpad T41 laptop. Well, I only use it for Uni and most of that is AV and IBM utilities.

Honestly? I would just buy another stick if you can afford it. Shop around and you can get one for £20.
 
smids said:

The Crown's mine!

PC2700 768MB RAM, IBM Thinkpad T41 laptop. Well, I only use it for Uni and most of that is AV and IBM utilities.

Honestly? I would just buy another stick if you can afford it. Shop around and you can get one for £20.[/QUOTE]

do you open every app know to man for a laugh?
think ** pc is long over due a reinstall :-P
20 - 25 on a fresh install for me 40 would be the average after a lot of stuff has been installed
Click to expand...
 
binaryknight said:
do you open every app know to man for a laugh?
think ** pc is long over due a reinstall :-P
20 - 25 on a fresh install for me 40 would be the average after a lot of stuff has been installed
Click to expand...
The install is only 4 months old. In fact, it has hardly anything installed on it. Runs perfectly fine and I cannot lose most of those as they are IBM utilities which are required such as HDU impact protection system, monitoring utilities and security utilities. As you can see, there is very little RAM usage.
 
RIght, I'm gonna order myself some more memory at the weekend, just want to check, what exactly I'm needing.

This is the memory spec info for my mother board (taken from the mother board manual...what a great read...)

memory_spec.jpg


So would the "OcUK Value 512MB PC3200 184pin DDR Memory (MY-002-OK)" be ok or would I be better off shopping around to find some matching speed PC2700 stuff??

Valve
 
If it was me I'd add another 1gig, 1.5gig is the sweet spot for memory right now (for gamers at least).

PC3200 will be fine although bear in mind that it will only run at the speed of your existing RAM. Kinda suprising to see your system has a P4-2.8 and PC2700 RAM, since that cpu can only come in 533fsb (PC2100 RAM) and 800fsb (PC3200 RAM) variants. I'd imagine therefore that it is is running at the lower PC2100 speed. Then again I could be wrong, it might be running 800fsb with a divider to run the memory slower.
 
But if you add 1GB, you cannot have dual channel and dual channel gives a massive performance boost on Intel's due to bandwidth hungry processors.
 
Ye it would fit but to be honest youd be better getting the 1gig OCUK kit if you got the cash because all the RAM in your system runs at the speeds of the slowest chips. Crucial and samsung have pc2700 RAM on OCUK.

If you would rather just cut down on your processes run msconfig and select diagnostic startup. This will only open the services required to run the system then from there you can choose which other applications, if any you want to run on startup.
 
I've decided to go for a 512 stick at the moment and when I've been paid next I'll add another one to give me 1.5 gb.

Broon, thanks for the info about cutting down the number of processes, I'll give it a go.

Valve
 
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