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98SE Resources Filling Up...

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by will shakespeare 1 view

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Hello,

I'm new to this 'forum', and I wanted to see what may be offered for a problem I have been suffering for a few weeks now, and have not been able to solve.
The only changes to my system have been the following, in order:
1) Cable Modem.
2) Office XP (and latest updates more recently)
3) McAfee online virus/firewall protection
4) Free Mem Pro
5) A few minor programs and applications including Borland C++ compiler 5.0, Gif animator, Xara 3D, Weight Watchers CD.
6) A few other things but the problems have occurred since, and still do, so I don't think they are the problem.

Now to the problem: AFter WIndows has been switched on, and left alone for a couple of hours, my memory gets filled up. I used Free Mem Pro to free memory, and then purchased another 512 MB, for a total of 640Mb! You would think that was enough, but this does not change that the system becomes unstable after a while, always! And if I use an application, especially Front Page, or other XP app, then it'seems' like the memory they take up is not Collected(Java-term), or refreshed. One symptom I noticed recently was when I clicked in Word 2002 to go to a web site with embedded sound, and then I closed Word, the sound kept running even though I had no apps open! May be related, or not, I'm not sure. What would be nice is a system resource monitor to use with 98SE. If I had NT or 2000 at home, I'd not need help... ironically! ANother symptom is that my hard-drive starts going after a while, and just keeps churning away, until I can't even move the mouse for lack of memory! I am guessing this is the Virtual Memory filling up after RAM is full of , whatever...
Can anyone help? Anyone else have this problem? Seems like some sort of system-induced memory leak, but cannot figure out what is causing it... hence the need for a system monitor.
Anyone? I am desperate to sort this out!

10 replies

by will shakespeare

I forgot to mention that when I use Free Mem, it tells me I have, for example, 512Mb Free, but still the memory is full, because when I tried to run MSDOS prompt on one occasion after 'FreeMem'ing 512Mb, I still got a system warning saying there wasnot enough free memory to run this program...

by dklippert

The resource memory is not RAM or HD memory. It's a small pool that is used to operate the machine and applications. It's a static amount (Used to be 128 K). It's usually measured as a %. Applications borrow some of this memory and then they are supposed to return it. Many don't. Here's an article that may help you fix the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q259/1/61.asp
(there are no spaces in the URL)

by will shakespeare

I hate to say it, but this answer has not helped one bit to solve my problem. However, I have learned some new things from following your links, that although not relevant, have been to other problems I have ignored. Thanks for that.
I would like to invite you to offer more advice, though, as you do seem to know what you are talking about! :)
To update: I tried your suggestion, and went to the Qdoc at ms site, and there they offered some ideas. I did all of the things over a period of about 8 hours, deleting system level apps (from the Task Manager Type thing!), and rebooting, etc. but there was no change. Then, I started running the apps I suspected were the problem, while watching the Performance percentage... No change! Except when the app is open, of course, but when it closes, I actually get a few percent more on occasion! But still, after a few hours of running W98, I get hang-ups, system crashes, serious slow down, and trying to run small apps results in arrors about system resources being dangerously low! And the percentage is about 65% at this point!
Seriously, though, thanks Doug for trying, but do you have any other ideas?
Or does anyone else?

by saihib

Look at the properties of your Win386.swp file and make sure that "read only" is unchecked. If it is read only you will get error messages saying that you don't have enough memory to run a program. Windows tries to adjust the size of the swap file but can't if it is read only.

by will shakespeare

Hi,

I checked the file, and it is not read only. The only time I run out of system resources is when the machine has been on for about 4 or 5 hours without a reboot, but that is supposing I am not using it. It takes a little over an hour and a half if I am using it.
WHen looking for the Win386.swp file, I did notice a lot (hundreds, easy) of files that look almost identical to this one:
fffcc541_{EA64902E-CC4B-4BF9-9BE3-1F3BD74801B1}.tmp
I have never noticed these in the Windows directory before. DO you think these are supposed to be there? They are temporary files.
Also, does anyone know if a system app called Robot should be running? I can't find it in Start Up or the registry.

by Former member

I don't have a direct answer but I'm willing to bet that you are going to find that your problem has something to do with your cable modem setup.

by will shakespeare

Hmmm... I have suspected that, too, but NTL and Terayon don't seem to be able to help me. Anychance you may have heard of this problem before, and can point me in the right direction to talk to someone who has solved it?

by dklippert

Do you have Outlook set to Journal or are you using Word as an email editor?
Just questions.

by will shakespeare

Thanks for asking questions. I use Outlook Express. My emails are in text only mode, and I do not have a choice as in Outlok to use Word as editor. Plus, what is Journal?

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