Q for the RAM gurus?
 

Advent Pentium 1.8, 512 Mbs RAM, mobo graphics, triple boot (XP Home, W98SE and Linux Pro 8.1. In a moment of boredom I checked the RAM details in XP System Info. Total physical memory - 512, Available physical memory - 286.01!!! No programs running, so it seems a bit of an excessive loss somewhere. Can anyone offer an explanation, please?

Cornish Jack,

In the Task Manager look under Processes and see what you have running in there. That should tell you what is taking up all your RAM.

If you would like to know what any of the Processes do, refer here:

Windows XP Home and Professional Service Configurations

Take Care,

Richard

CJ your RAM status seems OK to me. You say there are no Programs running. But there are lots of Processes running such as refreshing the RAM itself, the anit-virus Service, perhaps a firewall, keeping the Display going, monitoring all the Interrupts and the hardware states etc.

About 50% in use is reasonable. Bear in mind that the less frequently used contents of RAM are continually paged out to the Pagefile.sys in the C: \ Drive on the Hard Disk. This Pagefile.sys should be 2-3 times the RAM. This Paging is a continual process where a lot of the workload is simply devoted to maintain the status quo.

[Edit: This was my 1000th post since the counter was reset. But a good few hundred were lost during the rebuild.]

fobotcso,

I was waiting for you to roll over your first Millennium. Congratz!

Richard

Richard and fobs
Many thanks for the tips - yes, I see what you mean!!
Apologies for the delay in acknowledging your posts - had an unexpectedly extended w/e away from the pooter.

Cornish Jack,

Always gald to help. ;)

Take Care,

Richard