Where'd My Memory Go?

[darksoul]

first of all i'm a little bit of a noob to windows xp and i want to say thank you very much for your time and help.

ok i've noticed lately that i'm using more and more Ram Memory to run things. now what i mean is that i've been crashing more often from a lack of enough memory so i've been keeping an eye on it through windows task manager. just booting up takes about 235mb and then when i run my main game it runs at about 540mb. but when i crash it's at above 700mb. i have 1 gig of ram by the way. and then if i just run the game for a little while and then quit it and look, then it's at about 250mb and the longer i run the game the more ram it shows being used when i get back to just running the os. 4 friends also have this game and neither of them have the same problem and my computer has been seeming a bit more sluggish for a couple of weeks now.

so far i have run anti spyware, anti virus, anti adware, and a registry cleaner, defraged and ran disc clean, and ran windows update. how would i go about trouble shooting what's causing it or at least what this type of problem is called so that i can google it?

the other thing that it could be is that like i said i'm new to windows and i couldn't resist trying a few tweaks from this site --> http://www.tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx i did those a couple of weeks ago, flirting with disaster, i know i shouldn't when i don't really know what i'm doing, but i couldn't resist playing with my new computer. i had to break it once. LOL

or the other thing is that i switch between windows and the game through the windows menu key while leaving the game runnin. i do that alot so that i can look up stuff online about the game alot. could that be causing the problem?

but maybe those did something but unfortunately it was so long ago that i don't remember which ones i did except that some were a registry edit. i'd reset the registry but i don't know how. let me guess i should've made a back up of the registry before hand. *smacks self in head*

anyways thank you very much for any help that you can provide.

Computer Specs:

amd 3500

windows xp sp2

80 Gig HD

1 Gig of Ram

Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT

Edited December 11, 2006 by darksoul

[mikex]

*smacks self in head*

LOL

When playing in the registry back it up or be ready for a fight.

When tweaking tweak a little, run the machine like normal for a few days the tweak a little more.

Make notes, hard copy, of what you did and when, this will help you figure things out later. I seem to tweak my machine late at night then forget what I did days later.

Once you have the machine tweaked like you want and it is purring like a kitten then you have the hard copy of the tweaks that worked and the ones that didn't. Makes for a quick recovery when having to reinstall or when setting up a new machine.

M

[lefty1953]

You could go back and un-tweak can't you? Running the Internet and games just doesn't work out on any machine. If it were a on-line game then it's ok, but to surf and run a game is going to cause problems. How many things do you have running on the system? Try Code Stuff Starter and stop unwanted programs from running. There are some exceptions though and you could ask if they can be stopped or not. The Windows key isn't made for switching back and forth from a game to the Internet. At least I would never do that. If it is games you want to play, play them. If you want the Internet use it. If you had a dual processor maybe.

[shanenin]

open the task manger, then click on the Processes tab, then click Mem Usage two times(not a double-click) untill it lists stuff in order of most memory used. This will show you exactly what processes are using so much memory.

[darksoul]

ok i've gone back tracked through my browser history and checked the registry settings to the stock settings and undid all registry tweeks that had to do with memory handling. i also skimmed through the running processes to see if there's 1 running that shouldn't be and i noticed that if i added up all the running processes that it doesn't match up with how much ram it says is being used. by well over 100 mb most of the times after running any large application or game. but right after booting it mostly matches up. so i'm assuming that either there is a rather large process running invisibly or it is not refreshing the ram back to the OS. also it seams to get worse the longer and more i run large programs or games.

Running the Internet and games just doesn't work out on any machine. If it were a on-line game then it's ok, but to surf and run a game is going to cause problems.

The Windows key isn't made for switching back and forth from a game to the Internet. At least I would never do that. If it is games you want to play, play them. If you want the Internet use it. If you had a dual processor maybe.

ummm i'm sorry, maybe i read it wrong. are you saying that running a game in background and surfing the net at the same time will cause problems on any computer system? and that i should never use the windows key to switch to the OS? but if i had a dual processor then it might be ok?

Edited December 14, 2006 by darksoul

[lefty1953]

ok i've gone back tracked through my browser history and checked the registry settings to the stock settings and undid all registry tweeks that had to do with memory handling. i also skimmed through the running processes to see if there's 1 running that shouldn't be and i noticed that if i added up all the running processes that it doesn't match up with how much ram it says is being used. by well over 100 mb most of the times after running any large application or game. but right after booting it mostly matches up. so i'm assuming that either there is a rather large process running invisibly or it is not refreshing the ram back to the OS. also it seams to get worse the longer and more i run large programs or games.

Running the Internet and games just doesn't work out on any machine. If it were a on-line game then it's ok, but to surf and run a game is going to cause problems.

The Windows key isn't made for switching back and forth from a game to the Internet. At least I would never do that. If it is games you want to play, play them. If you want the Internet use it. If you had a dual processor maybe.

ummm i'm sorry, maybe i read it wrong. are you saying that running a game in background and surfing the net at the same time will cause problems on any computer system? and that i should never use the windows key to switch to the OS? but if i had a dual processor then it might be ok?

That's my opinion. PCs are powerful, but they are limited to resources. Conflicting programs can lock up the PC or give you the BSOD. Different programs can use the same memory.

[Pete_C]

Why is it that you consider it bad to be using the RAM you have?

RAM is faster than hard drive swap (paging) file.

You are not using one of those STUPID memory managers like "Free RAM" designed to free up RAM by forcing things to use page file instead are you ?

That you have problems when you get a lot of your RAM used indicates to me that you may have mismatched sticks of RAM. Did you add RAM ? If so did you make sure that its specs matched those of the ones you already had ? (Latency, refresh rates etc)

Have you tried your RAM in different configurations? Normally the memory controller reads the stick in slot 0 (closest to processor) and makes all other sticks use those settings. Often changing which stick is in slot 0 will solve problems by changing the default management settings and getting one that the others can adapt to well.

Blindly using a "registry cleaner" is bad news. Often these work by comparing what they find to a database they have (gleaned from other databases on the internet, software authors submissions, and rarely testing by the maker of the cleaner). They compare what they find to what the database says they should and declare anything which does not match up to be an error and they fix it by deleting it. This can cause problems, especially if the database is out dated, or if you have a patch or update or version not tested.

[darksoul]

hello PeteC. i'm using a single 1Gig ram card, i'm gona be getting another 1 that's exactly the same from the same place for Chrismas btw. yay for gifts. but what my problem really is, is that when ever i use a program half the time after i quit the program the amount of ram used stays the same as when i was i was running that program. that happens until i run out of fresh ran program crash from lack of memory errors. i just mentioned games case they use the most ram for what i have on the computer. i was able to go back a change all the registry edits back to stock configurations, or at least for all the changes that i can remember or show up in my history log. i've defiantly learned my lesson about backing up the registry first. no i'm not using a memory manager btw.