My computer uses too much RAM; how to fix this ?

Install linux on it; linux flies on 512MB ram

 

Don't know what you're doing there.. I ran Win2k and also XP on an older machine for years with only 512 and never had any problems.

 

Try taking some out

 

Yes, it should.

That's provided, of course, you don't do silly things like not use a pagefile, disable needed services, disable prefetching, indiscriminately remove items found by a Registry cleaner, or any of the myriad other ill-advised 'system optimization tweaks' easily picked up off the Internet.

 

I use CleanMem. I have set it to run every 10 minutes and keeps my memory usage down

 

You know I had exactly the same problem with 2 machines: a netbook with 1GB ram (fairly new) and my very old laptop with 512 MB ram. Like you I thought 512 MB is enough for browsing (XP HOME SP3) but somehow lately it was always hovering around 500-600 making the machine unusable. What I did was to systematically uninstall anything that was not necessary (I suddenly realized how much bloat I had accumulated in 5+ years, including these useless Microsoft. NET Framework) .

What really made a difference (in my situation, I don't want to ruffle anybody's feathers!) was to disactivate Avira's guard, uninstall Sandboxie (it is very light with my Vista, but definitely was revving up the CPU with the old XP). I've also unchecked automatic updates as at start up it kept the machine going for ages with high memory usage. Last but not least purged the registry with jv16 power tools of zillions of useless entries.

It now uses 170 MB, constantly, 210 with Chrome on, and is almost as fast as my modern notebook. Security is in the hands of ShadowUser Pro + Avira on demand. I agree, why spend money on a machine that could be discarded at any moment.

 

I have ubuntu lucid 64bit and it rarely consumes more than 350 mb.
I think xubuntu would be perfect for you. Download the iso , burn it into a cd and then boot from it. See how it goes with your hardware.
good luck.

 

Or maybe Peppermint OS:
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06224

 

I've read that this may be the big culprit lately.

 

I had myself Ubuntu on a fast core duo machine which had XP home first and then tried Ubuntu for a couple of weeks (no dual boot, one after the other). Ubuntu is fast but not faster than XP home, at least on that machine. This thread is not about which OS is faster, but why suddenly a machine with XP and 512 MB of RAM becomes sluggish to the point of being unusable.

Look at my screenshot, this is how XP is supposed to behave memory wise (my Vista64 is around 850 MB with Chrome/Wilders!).

 

I don't claim to be an expert, but I was able to clear up the sluggishness of my mom's XP machine with SP3. She has 1024MB of RAM installed but it only seems to recognize about 900 for some reason.

First off, I'd enable the page file. You don't really need it if you have RAM to spare, but in your case it should help. There's nothing wrong with using the hard drive as virtual memory. That's the way Windows is set up and it can do some good.

You might want to look at Avast5 Free antivirus. RAM usage is relatively low and for a free product it's quite good. When I replaced Webroot Antivirus with Avast there was immediate improvement, especially with start up. I'm not sure about your SP2 though, I'd make sure it's compatible first, it should be though.

Uninstall all unnecessary programs and files. There are a lot of files you may not realize you can safely delete. A lot of .log files for example can be huge and are usually safe to delete (not anything with "setup" in the name though). You'll just have to look into it for your system but the idea is to get rid of as much as possible. Then install Defraggler disk defragger. It's not top of the line, but it's free and it'll do what you need, move all your data to the fast outer tracks of the hard drive. If you can lean down your system and get all your data to outer 3 or 4 tracks you'll see a big improvement. The Windows XP defragger might do the trick but I think Defraggler is better. If you have an installation disk that came with your system that has all the installed programs on it you're way ahead of the game. Just uninstall all the ones you rarely use and if you ever need one of them in the future you have it. Some systems have the program installers stored on the computer, you just have to pick the ones you want and reinstall. It'll be called Application Installer or some variation of that.

Keep an eye on what's updating in the background. Wherever possible set your preferences to notify you only and let you choose when to download. Even when a program checks for available updates it's using bandwidth and processing power so if you want just disable updates (except for your antivirus) and check yourself periodically. Set the antivirus to notify you only.

It sounds like you're already aware of services and start up programs. Go through them with a fine-toothed comb and make sure everything is as bare-bones as possible. You may have to do some online research. There are probably some things you thought were necessary but really aren't.

You can spend money on RAM but if you install it on a poorly maintained system it won't help much.

 

Because the video card uses 124MB of dedicated memory, most likely.

Not exactly accurate, I don't believe.
Windows will use available hard drive space for different and various paging operations-- writes, caching, and that sort of thing-- and the space it uses can be variable, not always constant.
The more 'elbow room' available for these operations, the 'faster' the operation is likely to be-- though we're generally talking milli and nanoseconds here.

Perhaps it's sometimes referred to as such, and it may be a matter of somewhat picking nits-- but to my knowledge the HD is only used for RAM (i.e., operations involving the creation and management of virtual memory), but the drive technically never serves as actual memory itself.

Now, having said that, I'll concede that I also don't have the technical expertise required to argue the point any more precisely.
And if I'm wrong in my notions, those who do have that technical expertise are welcome to correct me.

 

I just posted about this situation @ another forum. I believe the key offender for the big slow downs in smaller RAM XP machines is a recent change in RAM usage (just how recent I don't know) during Windows/Microsoft Updates.

To boil it down to the simplest answer, if you have an XP PC with less than 1 GB in RAM, you will likely have slow (really slow if 512 MB or less) boot times if WU/MU is set on automatic. Along with WU/MU, the boot up time frame typically includes AV updates, along with other stuff like Java updates and so forth. With all this stuff going on, it's easy to see why things are slow.

I have personally dealt with this situation multiple times lately. Within the last week, I have upgraded the memory in 7 XP laptops from 512 MB to 1 GB. In every case, boot times went from 12 to 15 minutes down to 3 to 5 minutes.

If you are not able or willing to increase RAM, the only recourse you have is to turn off auto WU/MU and only manually do them when you won't be using the computer for anything else. And give yourself plenty of time because it's going to take a while...

As for the page file/swap file, I would urge you to not disable it, no matter how much hard drive activity may be occurring. Windows compensates for changes in RAM usage/handling by using the swap file. If it's off and you have gobs of RAM, you're probably fine. But if RAM is barely sufficient, having no swap file (or too small of a swap file) can bring freeze-ups and even crashes.

**EDIT**
I mention XP specifically because most Vista or 7 PCs are newer and therefore have sufficient memory to deal with higher RAM usages. But if your PC has Vista/7 and you are stretching your RAM to it's limit, then you may have the same type of issue if booting is too slow.

 

I just checked my system at startup.

Among other things, wuauclt.exe was consuming more than 100 MB RAM. I'm not sure about CPU usage.
That's Windows/Microsoft (?) update.

It's a fairly new issue and I've read that Microsoft is investigating this.

 

I ran a Dell Dimension 3000 with 512 MB (2X256) for years, just until recently, and it ran like a charm. Does your motherboard support dual channel? If it does, 2 sticks are better than 1. With limited resources it can make a difference. The only thing I changed was adding more ram (2X512). I was able to find 2 sticks of Kingston (matched) for $30 off EBay at my speed, so I jumped on it. I also said in the past I wouldn't pay to upgrade it because it was so old, but that $30 was well worth it. The difference is clearly noticeable.

Of course I also have my OS tweaked like a son-of-a-gun. I have only 20 processes running right now, for example. I have only 14 things listed as "Started" in my "services", and 3 things on automatic startup. Those are just the more important of many tweaks you can make to converse precious resources on a setup like yours. Even visual/display settings can make a dramatic difference (i.e. showing content while dragging & dropping) with only 512 MB of ram... I know that from experience.

So see if you can't find yourself a cheap, used set of sticks (see if your MB supports dual channel) off EBay too, and employ some of these tweaks (they're easy to find). Just do your research first so you don't break things. It took me some time & effort to find out exactly what some of these vague services/processes REALLY do, and if I really needed them or not. In almost every case I didn't, and it was just sucking juice needlessly.

After/if you add more ram adjust your pagefile allocation. Rule of thumb - Initial size should be roughly 1.5 times the amount of physical ram (768 MB for you right now). I set the maximum size to the same thing, personally I think it runs smoother that way. It will probably "recommend" something very close to 768, but not quite (usually a tad less). That's fine... go with that.

And disabling your pagefile will probably only make things worse. Yes, it's slower than physical memory, but it will only be utilized if you've used all that up. In that case it's better to have it there than not at all. And also, it should NEVER come to that. If you're pushing it to that limit it's time to either get more ram, and/or tweak things you don't need and take those resources back.

I also wouldn't recommend doing away with Avira, as the free edition is probably the lightest AV I've ever used. I can get Avast running even lighter, but it sacrifices most of it's functionality in the process. I would stick with it... just don't enable the "advanced process protection", and don't have the resident scanner scanning archives.

 

I have read this too. But IMO, I have doubts how well MS will investigate it. It's mostly affecting older XP machines and their focus is not on XP.

FWIW, in addition to wuauclt, there is also wuauserv, which runs under one of the svchost listings. Together I have seen them from 300 to almost 500 MB for short periods of time. Very high for an old machine to deal with!

 

Real simple solution: Turn it off.

Except in very rare 'out of band' instances, Microsoft issues updates on the second Tuesday of the month. Perhaps you already know that.

Enable auto updates every second Tuesday of the month, get your updates, then disable auto updates again until the next second Tuesday of the month.

That one's not rocket science.

 

You cannot go by that logic. Yes when WinXP first came out, 512 megs of RAM was the average back then, and it was enough for XP and most applications at that time to run fine.

However, you have allllll these Microsoft updates...more complicated and more secure browsers (internet exploader 8 now, versus 6), applications are "heavier", and antivirus software is heavier. 512 megs is no longer adequate....running an updated XP on 512 megs is a painful experience, stop punishing yourself and slap in another stick (or 3 or a pair of 2 larger ones) in that computer to at least bring it to a gig of RAM. A few years ago I started installing base systems for people with 2 gigs of RAM, now all are 4 gigs..yes even with XP.

RAM is dirt cheap these days, and it's the most cost effective computer upgrade you can do.

 

I have a very simple browser ... IE 7.
No programs besides Avira's suite, Windows services/processes and a few necessary drivers at startup.

So aside from Avira and MS it's not heavier.

So I can go by that logic.

When I bought this computer it had 256 MB RAM !
The machine is obsolete and probably has only two slots for RAM. I once had issues with spf/sfp (?) and had to adjust something in my BIOS to 'automatic'.
I really don't want to bother with all this, and I'm paying in euros, not 30 USD.

The time to invest in this machine has passed.

512 MB RAM should be more than enough. If the AV is the problem, fine, I can remove it.

But MS shouldn't require me to invest in even more RAM.

I could turn off MS updates. Windows updates is of no use anyway, since I decided to stick with SP2.
But if I do that, how do I prevent my system from nagging about MS updates being turned off ?

 

So normal updates are only once a month? Did not know that.
I had disables auto-update service once; without it I could not go to windows update and do a manual update --- it complained that auto-update must be turned on. I didnt know about this once a month feature, so I turned auto-update on (but I only do updates manually, not automatically)

 

I'm not certain if non-security updates are on any sort of schedule or not.
But given that they're non-security updates, you should be able to live without them for a couple/three weeks until that second Tuesday of the month when you go get your security updates, no?

Absolutely correct-- the auto updates service needs to be running when you visit the Microsoft Updates website.

What nagging? Something from the Security Center, maybe?
If so, there should be a setting or box to uncheck about not notifying you of that.

Or you could disable the Security Center altogether.
I've never used it, and it serves no real purpose anyway if you're paying the slightest bit of attention to your machine.
I know if my firewall is enabled or not, I know if I have AV software installed or not and I know if it's enabled or not.
When auto updates is turned off, I also know that-- because I consciously and intentionally turned it off.
I don't feel I need the Security Center telling me things I already know.

I'm not specifically recommending that you turn it off-- that's up to you and depends on how you feel about it.
I'm just saying I never see any 'nags' about having auto updates disabled, and perhaps that's why.

 

It seems it's possible to disable automatic updates and stop the security center from nagging. Thanks.

 

I'd like to know how ? I had the same issue recently !

 

Disable Automatic Windows Update.