What are we avtually looking at when we see "system resources 54% free"

[Taylor]

What are we avtually looking at when we see "system resources 54% free"

winme, iwill kk266/tbird 1333, 512 corsair cas 2, fsb 100, udma-100 hdd, boot it up, go online, load ie and outlook express, and resources as shown in "my computer" "properties" goes from 92% available to 54%. What's that all about?

 

[turd]

From what I understand its low DOS memory, that 640KB
loads DLL,s among other things, which is y it goes with apps. Usually a prog releases it after initial use.

 

[zachj]

System resources represents the collective state of all of your computing devices, mainly storage and RAM. It averages the amounts free and gives them a value on their scale of importance and averages them. The result given you is what Microsoft decided represented your system resources. My opinion is that most of the resources' importance is free RAM. Windows 9x (95, 98, 98SE, me) has very poor memory management, thus RAM is quickly used up and slowly released. If I were you, Id get 2K or Pro if you want better available resources, but it isn't a big deal as long as you can live with it.

Z

 

[Taylor]

Thanks much guys, I appreciate the come-back. I suspected it was so, because my winstone and sandra scores were quite decent when I benched this thing a few months ago and I've noticed no change in performance. Maybe I should run the benches again and see if anything's different. I sure don't have a problem with the way it's working now.

 

[Heat]

You know when I had KazaaLite running for a couple of days on my old PII 190 ram rig w/ w98, its system resources were 16% Probably just a few minutes from a crash. But W2k and XP Pro really are good at managing memory.

I'd recommend not to leave several apps running for a long time that will hog hog your resources and possibly cause some freezing up. But 54% isn't really that bad, I'd start worrying when it goes below 40% JMHO.

 

[JigPu]

System resources represents the collective state of all of your computing devices, mainly storage and RAM. It averages the amounts free and gives them a value on their scale of importance and averages them. The result given you is what Microsoft decided represented your system resources.

You're right on most points, but wrong on exactly what "system resources" measures.

System memory is a small (can't remember how much) amount of memory which holds all the crucial windows stuff (from what I can tell, the kernal mostly).

[snip from another article.... since it explains these two better than I can]
USER has a 16 bit heap and two 32 bit heaps. One of these 32 bit heaps stores WND (window) structures. There is a WND for every window in the system. The structure holds important info about the window. The other 32 bit heap stores menus. The 16 bit heap stores things like window classes, message queues etc.

The User component also manages input from the keyboard, mouse, and other input devices. It also manages interaction with the sound driver, timer, and communications ports. Windows 98 uses an asynchronous input model for all input to the system and applications. As the various input devices generate interrupts, the interrupt handler converts these interrupts to messages and sends the messages to a raw input thread area, which in turn passes each message to the appropriate message queue. Although each Win32-based thread can have its own message queue, all Win16-based applications share a common one.

GDI has a 16 bit heap and a 32 bit heap. GDI uses its heaps to store fonts, brushes, fonts, palettes, bitmaps and pens (graphical stuff).

The GDI is the graphical system that manages what appears on the screen. It also provides graphics support for printers and other output devices. It draws graphic primitives, manipulates bitmaps, and interacts with device-independent graphics drivers, including those for display and printer output device drivers.
[/snippet of article]

JigPu

 

[zachj]

I thought the kernal was only loaded to main memory if you instructed the registry to do so in a hack. I thought it was too large to sit there with the average user's amount of RAM. When I said system memory, I meant RAM in general. Sorry for the confusion.

Z

 

[Taylor]

Any idea why resources go from 92% to 54% simply by firing up IE and logging on? I would think IE would eat it's share of RAM but not in that "system" memory, and how much ram could it take to log on?

*edit* well shutting off IE gained me 7%, and shutting off Outlook Express got me another 3%, but obviously I'll have to go at it from the other direction, just closing an app doesn't free up it's resources like people (me) wish it might. I've heard that winme is still a memory leaker.

 

[rogerdugans]

Win9x is famed for its weak memory management, unfortunately, and while it can be tweaked to decent levels, it takes quite a bit of effort. Real world this means that you should reboot at least once every few days, even if everything is running fine.

Any and every running program uses a bit of memory: every icon in the system tray makes things worse, because they are all running programs: if you have anything in there you do not NEED, get rid of it!

I haven't messed with 9x much i a while, and very little with WinME at all, but as I recall there is no Task Manager utility that shows all running processes (as in the NT kernel versions)?
There used to be a few downloadable freeware/shareware programs available for this purpose: it makes it much easier to see what is actually running, and shut things down as needed.

Win9x can start programs from numerous places: Startup folder, Registry, win.in and autoexec.bat at the least, so finding them all manually can take a while- but my suspicion is that you have a lot of apps running that you may not be aware of.

 

[zachj]

If I'm not mistaken, IE is known to be bloatware direct from Microsoft to your home, and so well integrated into your Windows machine that taking it out is almost sure death. There are apps that remove IE from Windows and allow you to use Netscape or another program like Mozilla, which I strongly suggest if you're looking to reduce memory use. Either way, like I and someone else said, there's really only so much that can be done. I'm pretty sure the the task manager in 9x only displays programs and not tasks, like the above poster stated. To keep memory from being retained after you've closed an app, try keeping ones you don't use from starting in the first place. That way you'll have more memory while using things like Internet Explorer. If you're looking for better resources management, go for NT based OS's. But if you can live with it, there are things you can do to alleviate your dillema to a certain extent. Look around, and you'll find some good ones and some not so good ones. How much RAM and what type of RAM do you have? SDRAM really sucks. DDR is pretty much wasted on 9x. If you're putting around with only 128 MB of RAM, I'd suggest getting more. Windows OSs, no matter what they tell you, require a whole heap o' RAM. If you've got limited amounts of RAM, Windows will start using Hard Drive space as RAM, which is not only gruelingly slow, but is a very big resource waste. If you've got programs actually utilizing virtual memory when you're only using a few programs, get more memory or get an OS that will manage memory better.

Good luck

Z

 

[Taylor]

winme, iwill kk266/tbird 1333, 512 corsair @cas 2, fsb 100, udma-100 hdd

As sdram goes, this isn't too bad. Frankly I'm happy with the current performance. It's a box I built for my father last spring, and he has no desire to OC. He is one of those guys who, even as a high-level professional, made himself get by with a slow 'puter for years, I don't know why. He knew he wanted a faster one but maybe didn't know how badly he needed it! So with this thing running well as far as I can tell, no need to worry.

I just get these bugs in my ear asking me to find out what something means and why, that's why I love it here.

The box doesn't crash, he turns it off every few hours whenever he's not using it. Everything he does on it goes fast, especially compared to the dog he used to use.

I can't thank you guys enough for the input, I really do get a great feeling hanging here.

 

[zachj]

I feel the same. I look forward to returning from school just to check my User CP and see if people've replied. It's a great feeling to help other people and be helped in such a pleasant environment.

Z

 

[flyingember]

it's only the percentage of 640K. I added ram to my mom's machine and % didn't increase at all.

as for leaks. they're really common in older programs and poorly written ones. get all ms patches if you haven't