bigmike81

HI, I am new to this forum. I looked it up because I was not getting any help on my Dell Forum...

I am having a major memory problem or leak and need help with it.


First off, I just upgraded from a 128MB Ram to a 256MB Ram and, I believe I am having a problem that I did not know I was having before. Before I bought the new ram I always noticed my system crashing on me.

Well, after I bought it I decided to start checking up on the memory to make sure it was working appropriately.

Well, I find that when I start my Laptop that I have 100MB of Available Memory and when I logged off yesterday it was down to KB of Available Memory.

The longer I use the computer eventually it will crash or hang on me, I guess until it is able to free up memory, but I don't even wait that long and if I do the system will just shut itself down.

Now I do have alot of programs running and some of which I do not even know why they are running, because they are not supposed to be. Like my POwerDVD always seems to be running even when not in use.
Also my YAHOO SBC DSL Anti Virus Online Protection has like several programs running all at one time just to keep it running, and I know that not all of them need to be in use, it has to be taking up an ass load of available memory.

Kernel32.DLL seems to be taking most of the Memory, too. 524MB times 4
It is running 4 times so it is taking about 2096kb or about 2MB
If someone can tell me how to print screen I forgot, I have been off the PC for a long long time, and just bought this laptop months ago...

Here is an overview of what my system is doing as of right now...

Total Physical Memory 255.45 MB
Total Available Memory 12.00 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.71 GB
Page File Space 1.75 GB


Total Disk Space 28601 MB
Available Disk Space 25181 MB


Cache Size 893 MB
Available Cache 319 MB



RUNNING TASKS


Explorer.exe 220kb
Cavrid.exe 181kb
pdvdserv 32kb
winmgmt 193kb
YCommon 212kb
YOP 388kb
cavtray 225kb
loadqm 7kb
Systray 36kb
ISafe 253Kb
vetmsg 197kb
annlist 132kb
ddhelp 32kb
helpctr 488kb
iexplorer 89kb
Kernel32.dll 524kb
Kernel32.dll 524kb
Kernel32.dll 524kb
Kernel32.dll 524kb
mprexe 28kb
mtask 124kb
pstores 49kb
spool32 60kb
stmgr.exe 60kb
taskmon 28kb
tvwakeup 44kb
wmiexe 16kb


These are in no particular order and are all .exe extensions programs, except for the Kernel32.dll

And most of these are running on the Yahoo Online Protection. If anyone wants a screen shot of this that can help me, just remind me how to do it.
Or I can just find out exactly which ones run off of Yahoo Online Protection...

Thank You, I hope that someone can help me out here so that I am able to find a way to stop this leak and free up memory w/o having to reboot my system. Or cut down on memory usage.

bigmike81

Well, I thought it would be taking up more memory than this, but when I added it up I got 5.2 MB...
I still think that there must be something wrong, though. It does not free the memory back up it just uses it and keeps it.

bigmike81

My memory problem is getting to be really really bad...

I was downloading things and was on the computer for awhile and I knew that my memory was running low, and it got down to like 286kb and I thought maybe that the virtual memory would start to take over... That did not happen. I notice that my system was on the verge of crashing and programs were just hanging up, and I had to manual shut them down with CTRL ALT DEL.
Then I tried to shut down the computer all together and it had not enough memory to shut down itself, which is bad. I waited hella long for the memory to free up and it never did and I tried closing every program except for EXPLORER and this still did not work. I had to just give up after awhile and say the hell with it and shut it down with the emergency button.

I would like to know if there are other ways I can safely shut down the computer when this sort of thing occurs. I still also need to know how can I fix this problems I am having before I hire someone that can do something that I can be told how to do. I see that several people have viewed this post. I know one of you guys knows how to fix this problem, I wish you could help me out.
Thanks anyhow.

bigmike81

I finally down loaded this thing called the Memory Optimizer, but I thought those programs just made the computer run slower. I was wanting to know if it was a good idea to download and use that thing.

zavill

Whoooo!!!!
There are so many things that could influence your memory that is rather difficult to start form the scratch.
Suppositions:
1- you run Windows XP
2- you have a shared video memory on your laptop
3- you don't have a real firewall and virus scanning program
4- you played with virtual memory settings and is not controlled by the system anymore
5- you have a lot of graphical (and extremelly useful ;-)) things
6- the HDD is not huge
However, I might be wrong but I've not seen the description of your hardware, therefore these assumptions.

Suggestions:
1- uninstall what you don't really need
2- control panel> system properties>advanced>performance>settings>visula effects>adjust for best performance and then in settings>advanced>virtual memory>system managed size
But again, there are so many things that could influence...
For print screen just tap "print screen" and you have a copy in clipboard, then paste it somewhere (in a file for example). You have variations with shift + print screen.

bigmike81

I do not have windows XP, I have windows ME and I could not do what you said, because there was no such option in the computer system setup on control panel.
I looked for clipboard and could not find it and I also looked for MS Paint. I will probably just reformat my hard drive. I just hate to have to do that again, it is such a pain.

I downloaded this Registry fix thing too, and my dads computer genius guy who works for him said that was a big mistake. I think my system is all screwed up now and I would have no choice but to reformat

zavill

Well, when one makes suppositions might be wrong.
As for the clipboard, it's an application clipbrd.exe (somewhere probably in windows\system32, I'm not familiar with ME), but this is to view what you have in the clipboard memory and/or save it as a file.
When you hit "printscreen", the image of your screen is copied in the clipboard memory. When you open for example Paint, you may paste the info from that memory into your drawing board.

As I told you, I'm not familiar with ME (never had it installed on my machine) but just try something before reformating:
- sometimes there are a lot of temporary files (don't know how ME manages this) which are stored in windows (the root) and a subfolder (should be windows\temp). Try to manually delete everything inside the temp folder. Moreover delete everything in windows but only which hasthe size zero. Some of the subfolders of temp might not delete, restart and try again.

However, if nothing happens and you decided to reformat, good luck.

bigmike81

Ok I have searched for clip board, but the search comes up with nothing.

zavill

OK, forget about clipboard.
The idea is that this memory is functionning (it was there since windows 3.1, so...). If you press the key "Prnt Scrn" then you create a copy of the screen in that memory. Then open a program like Paint, Word, Wordpad, even a program like IrfanView (a pretty nice picture viewer, free http://www.irfanview.com/) and paste the information. Now you have the image previously stored on clipboard into your application. Basta.

Interesting how the discussion shifted from memory leak to clipboard (no way to blame the clipboard for your memory problem).