Hi,

You might be confusing RAM with resources--if you are reading your available per cent from My Computer | Properties | Performance, that's letting you know what your available resources are. Resources are a very specific and very tiny part of your memory, and the maximum level is constant for all Windows/DOS PC's, regardless of RAM count. It appears to me that you are running a fair number of TSR's in the background, and these are sucking up your resources. Possibly you can reduce that number, recover your resources, and be much better set to do everything, not just Internet work. It will all work faster and more efficiently, with far fewer memory errors. I will say, it's great that you are keeping your caches and temp folders--both IE and Windows--emptied out.

The way you improve your resources is to go to Start | Run | msconfig | Startup. The popup window which appears is full of checked boxes associated with files. Each of these represents a program which partially loads on boot, to be ready for you to quick launch from the activity tray, or it can represent a hardware instruction. The more of these boxes you can safely uncheck, given your particular configuration and needs, the more resources you will recover. Look the list over, OK? Some things you will immediately recognize, and can decide whether you want them to quick launch or just be available from the regular Start menu. Uncheck them right way, unless you need the quick launch. If you don't recognize some of the files, post a list, and someone here can usually identify the file, its program, and its necessity to you. Very little is actually necessary, however.

Now, if you are running an actual RAM meter, and this is your true RAM availability at boot, that's a different problem entirely, and probably beyond my scope.

Good luck,

Hi--again,

Whatever progress you can make on that list is all to the good. I would like to see your boot resources at at least 80% to 84%, but if you can make the system work on less than that, then that would be great.

I have to tell you, though, that Dell isn't responsible for the boxes being checked. Rather, Windows and the rest of the installed software put the checks there. Unfortunately, all of them feel they are vitally necessary for your successful computing experience. In general, you would want to leave System Tray, 2 entries for Load Power Profile, ScanReg, Tweak UI (if you have it), probably TaskMon, and probably your anti-virus program all checked. In addition, I leave true hardware entries checked--in particular, those for Hewlett-Packard equipment are important to leave alone. Beyond that, however, the checked boxes are just done for convenience to you.

As you become more comfortable with your system, you may wish to get some more of it unchecked, so at that time, just go ahead and post your list, and see what's up with it, OK?

Good luck

Kay

Thank you for your response......I appreciate it.

I may be confusing RAM with resources. I'm certainly no expert. In any event, I've taken your suggestion and have removed some of the things from that start-up menu that I knew were there, knew I didn't need them there, knew that they were robbing my system, but didn't know how to get rid of them. Thanks for telling me how to do that. There are many others in there that I don't really know if I need there or not, but since they were there on my machine when I bought it from Dell, I'm not comfortable in removing.

I'll run it with those start-up programs removed and see if my performance is better.

The RAM Optimizer program I'm running still shows that my system is operating at 22%.

Thanks again for your help........you may have solved my problem. Time will tell.

RWR

In addition to Kay's excellent advice, if you are unsure about what items from the Start Up menu to uncheck, post them here and someone can assist you in identifying them and letting you know whether or not it is save to uncheck them from the start up group.

As a further addition, I hope the RAM optimizer you mention isn't something you are running all the time.

Since I don't know precisely what you are running it is difficult to be sure; however, there are very few, if any, RAM optimizers that work well on current systems.

I believe that your RAM optimizer might well be robbing you of system resources that could be better used to run applications that increase your productivity.

&ltsarcastic aside&gtIf you are using MS apps, you will need all the help you can get.

Adios!

David Hendricks wrote:
-
- If you are using MS apps, you
- will need all the help you can get. - aside>


Hey David,

Very nicely put :)

Later,

David

Thanks for your response. I know it was lame to buy the RAM Optimizer, but I had to do something. My computer was running like the 49 Ford I had in High School. It might have helped some, but I doubt it.

I'll take your advice and disable it now that I've gotten some performance back into the machine.

Thanks again,

RWR

Dan

Thanks for your response. I'll take Kay's advice regarding the Start-Up items.

I've removed a lot of them and my system seems to run better.

As I told her, I knew I needed to get them out of there but didn't know how until she told me.

RWR

Kay

Thanks for staying with me on this. I'll take your recommendations regarding the Start-Up items and see how that goes. As I've told you, I've removed a lot of them and the system seems to be running better.

I understand your point regarding DELL vs. Software. But the $3,000+ system was running like a 386 and I was really frustrated.

Thanks again for your help,

RWR