Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Physical Memory in Windows XP

0 helpful
5 replies

by jchabtraining 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
In System Information it lists 256mb for my total physical memory and 79.77 as my available physical memory. Why the difference? Is this the same as system resources in Win98? I have a customer who is running WinXP and their machine is running very slow, we've checked for virus, cleaned up the disk (all that that entails to run maintenance on it)and they have listed 128mb memory but only 12mb available memory.

5 replies

by jschein

do they have a motherboard which is using an ONBOARD video card? That video card could be allocated however much memory specified by user... which could cause such a low reporting of avail. memory.

by timwalsh

128MB should be considered the "true" minimum amount of physical memory to run Windows XP. Microsoft's minimum of 64MB is really what it takes for XP to even boot.

128MB will allow XP itself to run without fits and jerks. Once you start adding processes like Word, or email (and especially if you try to run multiple processes concurrently), XP will b forced to start dipping into the pagefile, which WILL slow down WinXP.

If you really want to speed up your clients computer, upgrade to at least 256MB. You should see a noticable difference.

This discussion is closed to new replies.