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Windows ME memory reporting

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by cruncher_1 1 view

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We have just added 8 Compaq Presario 5000 computers with Windows ME to our network. They are having a variety of intermittent printing and logon problems. All the problems are temporarily solved by rebooting. The memory reported is 128 MB in the system information. The memory reported in the device manager general tab is 120 MB. At the command prompt mem command 66 MB is reported as total and 122 MB is reported as free. These computers seem to perform slower and slower the longer between reboots. Are all these items connected? How do I get the right amount of memory to be reported in all three places? Any help is greatly appreciated.

7 replies

by mdelyea

If the video is on the motherboard, you will get that 128 - 120mb difference because 8mb will be shared memory. I've seen this in other boards with integrated video. The other differences are because 1mb is actually 1024k and different software interprets this number differently (eg - 64mb is 65536k which could be rounded up to 66mb depending on how you choose to interpret that number) also, I believe there is a 64mb limit to usable memory from a command prompt, which if you consider the previous rounding up would show that you have 64mb of ram for a command prompt with 120mb (minus 8mb for onboard video) of ram for windows. Hope this helps!

by cruncher_1

Thanks for the memories. However, Do you have any ideas about the intermittent problems?

Thanks again.

by berserker

The 120MB reported by the device manager might by telling you that 8MB has been taken by the builtin display card. This is called as shared memory if your system is an Intel and has the i815 chipset.

The slowness might have been caused by any antivirus scanner or there are something wrong with your LAN enviroment.

by cruncher_1

Thanks for the memories. However, Do you have any ideas about the intermittent problems?

Thanks again.

by dpalsen

The problem you'll generally run into the longer you run ANY OS, and this includes Linux, is often sloppy coding that causes what's called a memory leak. More and more memory gets used up, and programs don't remove themselves when they terminate. As a result, the more programs you've used between reboots, the less memory is free. I generally reboot once a day when I finish for the night, whether I need to or not, just to clear out the RAM.

by shanghai sam

Thanks for your input. I stated that rebooting solves the problem, but sometimes it returns quickly. Ocassionally a user may have to boot 3 or 4 times a day. Thanks again.

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