Any Windoze experts on here ? Bit OT ...

[Arfa Daily]

Pretty bog standard machine here. AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of single
channel DDR 160MHz memory, couple of hard drives etc. Running Windoze 7
Ultimate 64 bit (not my choice, put on there by my lad, when he built the
machine).

In all general respects, it works just fine. But it has this really annoying
thing of clogging up its memory over a few days. Normally, this machine is
never turned off, as was also the case with its predecessor, which ran all
sorts of Windoze versions over the years that I used it, ending with XP Pro.
There was never any problem with memory clogging on that machine. This one,
however, starts off, after a clean boot, showing about 35% memory in use at
idle. There are a few 'background' progs running, such as a clock
synchronizer and a weather monitor, and Thunderbird as a mail client, anti
virus etc, so I guess that 35% is reasonable. But over the course of a few
days, the amount in use creeps up and up until you reach around 90% usage
with the same background progs running, and it otherwise idling. I have
tried a number of memory 'cleaner' programs and the best I have found to
date is one called simply "CleanMem". It claims to do a genuine job of
clearing unused crap out of the memory that's been left behind, unlike other
cleaners which it says work by fooling the system in some way by filling the
memory with zeros or some such. I'm not really au fait enough with the
workings of computers to understand just what it was saying, but suffice to
say that it does seem to work better than the others I've tried. But even
that one seems unable to recover the situation beyond about 75% usage. The
only way to get the memory back, and thus recover the speed of the machine,
is to do a "Restart", which is a royal pain in the arse.

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ? Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ? Not looking for a long drawn-out discussion
on this - I can live with it. Just interested to see if anyone better
qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive answer.

Arfa

 

[Adrian C]

On 19/02/2011 17:28, Arfa Daily wrote:

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ? Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ? Not looking for a long drawn-out
discussion on this - I can live with it. Just interested to see if
anyone better qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive
answer.

Rebuild. Take image. Next time it screws up, restore image & data from
backup.

This is where professional Windows computer support is heading. Nobody
diagnoses actual problems anymore.

For somewhere down the line, one of the manufacturers of the software
will find his memory leak - that will be after you upgrade to Windows 8.

Or, Linux Mint....

;-)

--
Adrian C

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Do you notice any slowdown when this occurs?

I have a similar "problem" under W2K. Windows creates a virtual memory swap
file when started, and expands it as needed. Unfortunately, the expanding
swap file causes the machine to slow down, and a restart is eventually
required. (This can take a few days to a week or more, depending on how
"hard" you push the OS. I tend to have a lot of apps and files open at once,
so I have to restart as often as every four or five days.)

It's also possible some freaky malware is running. You need a utility that
shows everything running on the machine, such as Process Explorer.

 

[D Yuniskis]

Hi Arfa,

On 2/19/2011 10:28 AM, Arfa Daily wrote:

In all general respects, it works just fine. But it has this really

---------------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

annoying thing of clogging up its memory over a few days. Normally, this

Are you sure you aren't just being upset by a "meaningless number"?
I.e., does PERFORMANCE degrade as the number increases? Have you
*analytically* observed its performance as the number reaches
"100%"?

I don't run W7 (insert large grin, here). So, don't
know *exactly* what the metric reflects. But, often
operating systems appear to be "using" memory that they
really aren't -- just haven't gotten around to reclaiming,
yet (i.e., there is a cost with reclaiming "previously
used" memory... why bear that cost if the system doesn't
*need* that memory -- yet!?)

You *could* have a memory leak in the OS or any of the
applications/services that are running. But, there is
no real way to *prove* that since the metric you are
observing might not be reflecting actual "memory actively
in use" (if it was, you could kill processes and watch
those that remain to chart how the metric changes over
time).

To do so, image the disk "as is". Then, clobber services
and applications and *measure* the performance "in some
reproducible setting". You can later restore the
original image and apply any lessons learned *to* that.

machine is never turned off, as was also the case with its predecessor,
which ran all sorts of Windoze versions over the years that I used it,
ending with XP Pro. There was never any problem with memory clogging on
that machine. This one, however, starts off, after a clean boot, showing
about 35% memory in use at idle. There are a few 'background' progs
running, such as a clock synchronizer and a weather monitor, and
Thunderbird as a mail client, anti virus etc, so I guess that 35% is
reasonable. But over the course of a few days, the amount in use creeps
up and up until you reach around 90% usage with the same background
progs running, and it otherwise idling. I have tried a number of memory
'cleaner' programs and the best I have found to date is one called
simply "CleanMem". It claims to do a genuine job of clearing unused crap
out of the memory that's been left behind, unlike other cleaners which
it says work by fooling the system in some way by filling the memory
with zeros or some such. I'm not really au fait enough with the workings
of computers to understand just what it was saying, but suffice to say
that it does seem to work better than the others I've tried. But even
that one seems unable to recover the situation beyond about 75% usage.
The only way to get the memory back, and thus recover the speed of the

------------------------------------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ah, this suggests that you *are* seeing actual performance
degradation.

machine, is to do a "Restart", which is a royal pain in the arse.

Build the largest "swap/paging/VM/whatever MS's term-du-jour is"
for the system and defragment that "file". I.e., give it
whatever it will ultimately need so it doesn't have to *grow*
the swap during use.

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ? Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ? Not looking for a long drawn-out
discussion on this - I can live with it. Just interested to see if
anyone better qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive
answer.

The answer, of course, is to dump Windows... :> (why not
go back to XP if that worked well for you?)

HTH,
--don

 

[circuit]

Doing a Vista home OS repair at the shop, after I fixed a hw problem with
the CPU overheating, I noticed what sounds like the same thing. Hard drive
also goes nuts fter a while too. After turning off some stuff in task
manager one by one, the culpret seemed to be the WLAN auto finder process,
or something like that. I remember the hard drive seeking all the time maybe
was fixed by turning off the indexing service.

Another good resource to post the problem or research for similar , are the
BBS forums at www.blackviper.com




"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:a5T7p.71812$qA1.44840@newsfe08.ams2...

Pretty bog standard machine here. AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of single
channel DDR 160MHz memory, couple of hard drives etc. Running Windoze 7
Ultimate 64 bit (not my choice, put on there by my lad, when he built the
machine).

In all general respects, it works just fine. But it has this really
annoying thing of clogging up its memory over a few days. Normally, this
machine is never turned off, as was also the case with its predecessor,
which ran all sorts of Windoze versions over the years that I used it,
ending with XP Pro. There was never any problem with memory clogging on
that machine. This one, however, starts off, after a clean boot, showing
about 35% memory in use at idle. There are a few 'background' progs
running, such as a clock synchronizer and a weather monitor, and
Thunderbird as a mail client, anti virus etc, so I guess that 35% is
reasonable. But over the course of a few days, the amount in use creeps up
and up until you reach around 90% usage with the same background progs
running, and it otherwise idling. I have tried a number of memory
'cleaner' programs and the best I have found to date is one called simply
"CleanMem". It claims to do a genuine job of clearing unused crap out of
the memory that's been left behind, unlike other cleaners which it says
work by fooling the system in some way by filling the memory with zeros or
some such. I'm not really au fait enough with the workings of computers to
understand just what it was saying, but suffice to say that it does seem
to work better than the others I've tried. But even that one seems unable
to recover the situation beyond about 75% usage. The only way to get the
memory back, and thus recover the speed of the machine, is to do a
"Restart", which is a royal pain in the arse.

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ? Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ? Not looking for a long drawn-out
discussion on this - I can live with it. Just interested to see if anyone
better qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive answer.

Arfa

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:28:36 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:

Pretty bog standard machine here. AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of single
channel DDR 160MHz memory, couple of hard drives etc. Running Windoze 7
Ultimate 64 bit (not my choice, put on there by my lad, when he built
the machine).

In all general respects, it works just fine. But it has this really
annoying thing of clogging up its memory over a few days. Normally, this
machine is never turned off, as was also the case with its predecessor,
which ran all sorts of Windoze versions over the years that I used it,
ending with XP Pro. There was never any problem with memory clogging on
that machine. This one, however, starts off, after a clean boot, showing
about 35% memory in use at idle. There are a few 'background' progs
running, such as a clock synchronizer and a weather monitor, and
Thunderbird as a mail client, anti virus etc, so I guess that 35% is
reasonable. But over the course of a few days, the amount in use creeps
up and up until you reach around 90% usage with the same background
progs running, and it otherwise idling. I have tried a number of memory
'cleaner' programs and the best I have found to date is one called
simply "CleanMem". It claims to do a genuine job of clearing unused crap
out of the memory that's been left behind, unlike other cleaners which
it says work by fooling the system in some way by filling the memory
with zeros or some such. I'm not really au fait enough with the workings
of computers to understand just what it was saying, but suffice to say
that it does seem to work better than the others I've tried. But even
that one seems unable to recover the situation beyond about 75% usage.
The only way to get the memory back, and thus recover the speed of the
machine, is to do a "Restart", which is a royal pain in the arse.

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ? Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ? Not looking for a long drawn-out
discussion on this - I can live with it. Just interested to see if
anyone better qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive
answer.

Arfa

Go into the task manager and view the amount of memory each process is
using. You've probably got one that has a memory leak which isn't
uncommon. Malwarebytes had a huge problem with that until they corrected
it.



--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

 

[martinmarty]

What are you using to see the amount of memory in use, like 35% then
eventually 90%?

I agree with the guy who said go into Task Mgr / Processes and see
which tasks are using the memory.

Another couple ideas to narrow it down, if you think you know what the
culprit is, to test the theory:

- Go into MSCONFIG and under the Services & Startup tabs, disable all
non-essential non-MS startups and services, then see if PC can idle
for a few days without gobbling up all mem.

- Along the same lines, try booting into Safe Mode and see if it can
idle a few days without gobbling up the mem.

Or if you don't know what the culprit is perhaps you can use those
techniques to determine by process of elimination.

Perhaps some program or even OS component has a debug trace or log
turned on which is stored in mem and the longer you run the more it
consumes.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:ijp0kl$j5l$1@news.eternal-september.org...

Do you notice any slowdown when this occurs?

I have a similar "problem" under W2K. Windows creates a virtual memory
swap
file when started, and expands it as needed. Unfortunately, the expanding
swap file causes the machine to slow down, and a restart is eventually
required. (This can take a few days to a week or more, depending on how
"hard" you push the OS. I tend to have a lot of apps and files open at
once,
so I have to restart as often as every four or five days.)

It's also possible some freaky malware is running. You need a utility that
shows everything running on the machine, such as Process Explorer.

Yes, it does slow down. I have the Windoze memory usage widget running, and
you can see the usage creeping up over a couple of days or so, to the point
where it reaches 90+ %, at which point, the machine is crawling, and having
difficulty having multiple programs open at once. It then needs a restart,
although occasionally, if I let it get too bad, there's not even enough room
to run the shutdown utility, and I then have to do a crash and burn BRS
restart ... Just as a matter of interest, the memory monitor that is part
of the cleaner program, agrees exactly with the Windoze widget.

As to W2K, I ran the pro version on my previous machine, prior to ending up
with XP Pro, and I have to say that I never seemed to have the problem with
either of those two versions.

Arfa

 

[Arfa Daily]

"martinmarty" <martyurbanek@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:cbdfc8a5-c78b-47c2-8f1e-ff0f02d8ecae@j9g2000prj.googlegroups.com...

What are you using to see the amount of memory in use, like 35% then
eventually 90%?

I agree with the guy who said go into Task Mgr / Processes and see
which tasks are using the memory.

Another couple ideas to narrow it down, if you think you know what the
culprit is, to test the theory:

- Go into MSCONFIG and under the Services & Startup tabs, disable all
non-essential non-MS startups and services, then see if PC can idle
for a few days without gobbling up all mem.

- Along the same lines, try booting into Safe Mode and see if it can
idle a few days without gobbling up the mem.

Or if you don't know what the culprit is perhaps you can use those
techniques to determine by process of elimination.

Perhaps some program or even OS component has a debug trace or log
turned on which is stored in mem and the longer you run the more it
consumes.

Some good steers there, and also from others who have replied. Thanks all
for your input. I am using two things to monitor the memory usage. The first
is the built-in Windoze memory and processor usage graphic desktop widget.
The second is the memory usage monitoring tool in the memory cleaner program
that I have been using. It agrees exactly with the Windoze one, which would
suggest that they are right. As you see the memory clogging up over a couple
of days, the system performance degrades very noticeably, to the point where
it becomes unusable for all practical purposes. If you then run the cleaner,
it will recover perhaps 20% at best, and there is a corresponding
improvement in performance, which again, would suggest to me that what the
widget is reporting as being the case, actually *is* the case. Ultimately,
the only way to get the system back to full normal performance, is to either
soft or hard restart, after which, low memory usage is again reported.

When I get time, I'll do a restart, and then note what all of the background
applications and the system, are using. When it has started to clog
noticeably, I'll recheck, and see what is using it all ...

Arfa

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 02:13:51 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:

Yes, it does slow down. I have the Windoze memory usage widget running,
and you can see the usage creeping up over a couple of days or so, to
the point where it reaches 90+ %, at which point, the machine is
crawling, and having difficulty having multiple programs open at once.
It then needs a restart, although occasionally, if I let it get too bad,
there's not even enough room to run the shutdown utility, and I then
have to do a crash and burn BRS restart ... Just as a matter of
interest, the memory monitor that is part of the cleaner program, agrees
exactly with the Windoze widget.

Open the Task Manager and see what process(s) are eating up your ram and
CPU. Report back.




--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

 

[Charlie]

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Z%_7p.18802$BQ7.12236@newsfe22.ams2...

Some good steers there, and also from others who have replied. Thanks
all
for your input. I am using two things to monitor the memory usage. The
first is the built-in Windoze memory and processor usage graphic desktop
widget. The second is the memory usage monitoring tool in the memory
cleaner program that I have been using. It agrees exactly with the Windoze
one, which would suggest that they are right. As you see the memory
clogging up over a couple of days, the system performance degrades very
noticeably, to the point where it becomes unusable for all practical
purposes. If you then run the cleaner, it will recover perhaps 20% at
best, and there is a corresponding improvement in performance, which
again, would suggest to me that what the widget is reporting as being the
case, actually *is* the case. Ultimately, the only way to get the system
back to full normal performance, is to either soft or hard restart, after
which, low memory usage is again reported.

When I get time, I'll do a restart, and then note what all of the
background applications and the system, are using. When it has started to
clog noticeably, I'll recheck, and see what is using it all ...

Arfa

Arfa, here is a little free (donate if you wish) program that will show you
all the stuff that runs upon system start.
It may find more than what msconfig indicates. It is always surprising how
much stuff wants to suck up your RAM without your explicit permission.

http://www.windowsstartup.com/

Charlie

 

[Jamie]

Arfa Daily wrote:

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:ijp0kl$j5l$1@news.eternal-september.org...

Do you notice any slowdown when this occurs?

I have a similar "problem" under W2K. Windows creates a virtual memory
swap
file when started, and expands it as needed. Unfortunately, the expanding
swap file causes the machine to slow down, and a restart is eventually
required. (This can take a few days to a week or more, depending on how
"hard" you push the OS. I tend to have a lot of apps and files open at
once,
so I have to restart as often as every four or five days.)

It's also possible some freaky malware is running. You need a utility
that
shows everything running on the machine, such as Process Explorer.



Yes, it does slow down. I have the Windoze memory usage widget running,
and you can see the usage creeping up over a couple of days or so, to
the point where it reaches 90+ %, at which point, the machine is
crawling, and having difficulty having multiple programs open at once.
It then needs a restart, although occasionally, if I let it get too bad,
there's not even enough room to run the shutdown utility, and I then
have to do a crash and burn BRS restart ... Just as a matter of
interest, the memory monitor that is part of the cleaner program, agrees
exactly with the Windoze widget.

As to W2K, I ran the pro version on my previous machine, prior to ending
up with XP Pro, and I have to say that I never seemed to have the
problem with either of those two versions.

Arfa
Me too, I've run W2k Pro here on this machine for a long time now, I do

not have issues with it. It may not have all of the goodies the latest
has how ever, it works!

Jamie

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Charlie" <left@thestation.com> wrote in message
news:ijr8cb$5pa$1@news.eternal-september.org...

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Z%_7p.18802$BQ7.12236@newsfe22.ams2...


Some good steers there, and also from others who have replied. Thanks
all
for your input. I am using two things to monitor the memory usage. The
first is the built-in Windoze memory and processor usage graphic desktop
widget. The second is the memory usage monitoring tool in the memory
cleaner program that I have been using. It agrees exactly with the
Windoze one, which would suggest that they are right. As you see the
memory clogging up over a couple of days, the system performance degrades
very noticeably, to the point where it becomes unusable for all practical
purposes. If you then run the cleaner, it will recover perhaps 20% at
best, and there is a corresponding improvement in performance, which
again, would suggest to me that what the widget is reporting as being the
case, actually *is* the case. Ultimately, the only way to get the system
back to full normal performance, is to either soft or hard restart, after
which, low memory usage is again reported.

When I get time, I'll do a restart, and then note what all of the
background applications and the system, are using. When it has started to
clog noticeably, I'll recheck, and see what is using it all ...

Arfa

Arfa, here is a little free (donate if you wish) program that will show
you all the stuff that runs upon system start.
It may find more than what msconfig indicates. It is always surprising
how much stuff wants to suck up your RAM without your explicit permission.

http://www.windowsstartup.com/

Charlie

Thanks Charlie. I'll give it a look

Arfa

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:29:48 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:

"Charlie" <left@thestation.com> wrote in message
news:ijr8cb$5pa$1@news.eternal-september.org...

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Z%_7p.18802$BQ7.12236@newsfe22.ams2...


Some good steers there, and also from others who have replied.
Thanks all
for your input. I am using two things to monitor the memory usage. The
first is the built-in Windoze memory and processor usage graphic
desktop widget. The second is the memory usage monitoring tool in the
memory cleaner program that I have been using. It agrees exactly with
the Windoze one, which would suggest that they are right. As you see
the memory clogging up over a couple of days, the system performance
degrades very noticeably, to the point where it becomes unusable for
all practical purposes. If you then run the cleaner, it will recover
perhaps 20% at best, and there is a corresponding improvement in
performance, which again, would suggest to me that what the widget is
reporting as being the case, actually *is* the case. Ultimately, the
only way to get the system back to full normal performance, is to
either soft or hard restart, after which, low memory usage is again
reported.

When I get time, I'll do a restart, and then note what all of the
background applications and the system, are using. When it has started
to clog noticeably, I'll recheck, and see what is using it all ...

Arfa

Arfa, here is a little free (donate if you wish) program that will show
you all the stuff that runs upon system start. It may find more than
what msconfig indicates. It is always surprising how much stuff wants
to suck up your RAM without your explicit permission.

http://www.windowsstartup.com/

Charlie



Thanks Charlie. I'll give it a look

Arfa

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

Download Autoruns and Process Explorer. Scroll down the page on the
right.

Those are just two tools in the arsenal I use when I'm out on a trouble
call. They are very useful at tracking down your sort of problem.

You have to be careful of some of these other suggestions. I don't trust
many of them, only what M$ Technet approves. Learned my lesson a long
time ago in the 90's.



--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

 

[martinmarty]

On Feb 20, 1:32 pm, Meat Plow <mhyw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:29:48 +0000, Arfa Daily wrote:
"Charlie" <l...@thestation.com> wrote in message
news:ijr8cb$5pa$1@news.eternal-september.org...

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.da...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Z%_7p.18802$BQ7.12236@newsfe22.ams2...

Some good steers there, and also from others who have replied.
Thanks all
for your input. I am using two things to monitor the memory usage. The
first is the built-in Windoze memory and processor usage graphic
desktop widget. The second is the memory usage monitoring tool in the
memory cleaner program that I have been using. It agrees exactly with
the Windoze one, which would suggest that they are right. As you see
the memory clogging up over a couple of days, the system performance
degrades very noticeably, to the point where it becomes unusable for
all practical purposes. If you then run the cleaner, it will recover
perhaps 20% at best, and there is a corresponding improvement in
performance, which again, would suggest to me that what the widget is
reporting as being the case, actually *is* the case. Ultimately, the
only way to get the system back to full normal performance, is to
either soft or hard restart, after which, low memory usage is again
reported.

When I get time, I'll do a restart, and then note what all of the
background applications and the system, are using. When it has started
to clog noticeably, I'll recheck, and see what is using it all ...

Arfa

Arfa, here is a little free (donate if you wish) program that will show
you all the stuff that runs  upon system start. It may find more than
what msconfig indicates.  It is always surprising how much stuff wants
to suck up your RAM without your explicit permission.

http://www.windowsstartup.com/

Charlie

Thanks Charlie. I'll give it a look

Arfa

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

Download Autoruns and Process Explorer. Scroll down the page on the
right.

Those are just two tools in the arsenal I use when I'm out on a trouble
call. They are very useful at tracking down your sort of problem.

You have to be careful of some of these other suggestions. I don't trust
many of them, only what M$ Technet approves. Learned my lesson a long
time ago in the 90's.  

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Like Meat Plow, I also find great value in the sysinternals tools.
Autoruns and Process Explorer are definitely in order if you can't
find your memory hog using the built-in utilities.

Autoruns is like a turbocharged MSCONFIG and Process Explorer is like
a turbocharged Task Manager.

It would also be a good idea to take a look in the event viewer and
see if there are a gazillion events from something going haywire, most
likely in the System or Application logs.

Not to start pointing fingers prematurely, but reviewing your original
post reminded me that I've seen some pretty "unexpected results" come
from both Google Desktop and Weatherbug, even though they behave fine
for some people.

I'm curious to see what Task Mgr says.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:28:36 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
<arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Pretty bog standard machine here. AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of single
channel DDR 160MHz memory, couple of hard drives etc. Running Windoze 7
Ultimate 64 bit (not my choice, put on there by my lad, when he built the
machine).

2GB is about the minimum I would use for Windoze 7 64 bit. If the
machine and your budget can handle it, try installing 4GB total. Also,
with twice as much RAM, it will take twice as long before it crashes.

There are a few 'background' progs running, such as a clock
synchronizer and a weather monitor, and Thunderbird as a mail client, anti
virus etc, so I guess that 35% is reasonable.

Be specific. Some mutations of Thunderbird had memory leak problem.
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems>
If your weather monitor is Weatherbug, I vaguely recall additional
memory leak problems. What program are you using for
anti-virus/spyware? Microsoft Security Essentials had a really minor
memory leak that was allegedly fixed in the latest 2.0.xxx release.

But over the course of a few
days, the amount in use creeps up and up until you reach around 90% usage
with the same background progs running, and it otherwise idling.

Classic memory leak. Some application is probably the culprit.
Monitor the memory usage and kill off running programs until you
identify the source of the memory leak. Going from 35% of 2GB to 75%
is a change of 40% of 2GB or 800MBytes change. Over a 3 day period,
that 11MBytes per hour or 183KBytes/minute. That's not a memory leak.
That's a program gone insane that should be exterminated from your
machine. You should be able to see that much memory loss visually,
using Task Manager, one of the numerous Windoze Widgets, or some
program that shows available memory.

I have
tried a number of memory 'cleaner' programs and the best I have found to
date is one called simply "CleanMem". It claims to do a genuine job of
clearing unused crap out of the memory that's been left behind, unlike other
cleaners which it says work by fooling the system in some way by filling the
memory with zeros or some such.

Memory defragmenters and cleaners don't do anything useful. Cleaning
the heap and other junk left in RAM doesn't stay around long enough
for any program to even detect misused RAM, much less doing anything
to expedite their removal.

I'm not really au fait enough with the
workings of computers to understand just what it was saying, but suffice to
say that it does seem to work better than the others I've tried.

Sigh. I once tried a RAM defrag program and was amazed at how much
available memory it was able to free. I eventually figured out what
it was doing. When it started, it would allocate a huge block of RAM
for scratch space. When it was done, it would magically free this
memory, claiming that it was salvage from program garbage collections.
Yep, it did, but the program the created the garbage was the RAM
defrag program.

But even
that one seems unable to recover the situation beyond about 75% usage. The
only way to get the memory back, and thus recover the speed of the machine,
is to do a "Restart", which is a royal pain in the arse.

I help maintain a fairly reliable Windoze 7 machine that's up and
playing SNMP network monitor:

C:\> systeminfo | find "System Up Time"
System Up Time: 13 Days, 4 Hours, 58 Minutes, 27 Seconds
(...)
Total Physical Memory: 1,980 MB
Available Physical Memory: 1,030 MB
Virtual Memory: Max Size: 2,048 MB
Virtual Memory: Available: 1,996 MB
Virtual Memory: In Use: 52 MB
Page File Location(s): C:\pagefile.sys

No sign of any memory leaks. It normally stays up longer, but
everyone has been playing with updates and revisions, so the uptime
tends to be more than about 2 weeks.

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ?

It's probably NOT Windoze 7. It's probably some application that
you're running. Download and install Belarc Advisor (free version)
and produce (don't post) a system report. Look down the list of
installed applications for a likely culprit for producing a memory
leak.
<http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html>

Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ?

No problems, but if you want reliability, I suggest Ubuntu or one of
the other Linux distributions. If you're running a fairly basic set
of applications (Web, email, word processor, spreadsheet, etc), then
Linux will be a suitable replacement. If you run a bizarre mix of
eclectic utilities and apps, stay with Windoze 7. OS/X on a Mac is
also a good substitute, but will cost about twice as much as the
equivalent PC. Retraining your son on a new operating system might
also be useful, as it will keep him occupied and out of your workspace
for a few weeks.

Not looking for a long drawn-out discussion
on this - I can live with it.

Well, if you want a one-line answer, you could at least have warned me
or supplied a one-line question. Grumble.

Just interested to see if anyone better
qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive answer.

I do this kind of stuff every day. I only see broken computers. I'm
sure there are users out there that have perfectly working machines,
but I never see them. That's the curse of being in the repair/support
biz. Also, if Microsoft ever produced a reliable product, I would be
out of business. The company motto is "If this stuff worked, you
wouldn't need me". It's on my biz card and all my stationary. Nobody
has ever disagreed (or cared).


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[William Sommerwerck]

No problems, but if you want reliability, I suggest Ubuntu or one
of the other Linux distributions. If you're running a fairly basic set
of applications (Web, email, word processor, spreadsheet, etc),
then Linux will be a suitable replacement.

That's the catch, of course. Operating systems other than Windows or
Macintosh don't have fancy software written for them.

...if Microsoft ever produced a reliable product, I would be out of
business.

Perhaps, but I run W2K, Word, and other Windows software without problems. I
do agree, however, that Windows sometimes behaves Most Strangely, for no
obvious reason.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:0393m6tc7r3o7uae8okvqkef8u4ll3mq30@4ax.com...

On Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:28:36 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Pretty bog standard machine here. AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB of single
channel DDR 160MHz memory, couple of hard drives etc. Running Windoze 7
Ultimate 64 bit (not my choice, put on there by my lad, when he built the
machine).

2GB is about the minimum I would use for Windoze 7 64 bit. If the
machine and your budget can handle it, try installing 4GB total. Also,
with twice as much RAM, it will take twice as long before it crashes.

There are a few 'background' progs running, such as a clock
synchronizer and a weather monitor, and Thunderbird as a mail client, anti
virus etc, so I guess that 35% is reasonable.

Be specific. Some mutations of Thunderbird had memory leak problem.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems
If your weather monitor is Weatherbug, I vaguely recall additional
memory leak problems. What program are you using for
anti-virus/spyware? Microsoft Security Essentials had a really minor
memory leak that was allegedly fixed in the latest 2.0.xxx release.

But over the course of a few
days, the amount in use creeps up and up until you reach around 90% usage
with the same background progs running, and it otherwise idling.

Classic memory leak. Some application is probably the culprit.
Monitor the memory usage and kill off running programs until you
identify the source of the memory leak. Going from 35% of 2GB to 75%
is a change of 40% of 2GB or 800MBytes change. Over a 3 day period,
that 11MBytes per hour or 183KBytes/minute. That's not a memory leak.
That's a program gone insane that should be exterminated from your
machine. You should be able to see that much memory loss visually,
using Task Manager, one of the numerous Windoze Widgets, or some
program that shows available memory.

I have
tried a number of memory 'cleaner' programs and the best I have found to
date is one called simply "CleanMem". It claims to do a genuine job of
clearing unused crap out of the memory that's been left behind, unlike
other
cleaners which it says work by fooling the system in some way by filling
the
memory with zeros or some such.

Memory defragmenters and cleaners don't do anything useful. Cleaning
the heap and other junk left in RAM doesn't stay around long enough
for any program to even detect misused RAM, much less doing anything
to expedite their removal.

I'm not really au fait enough with the
workings of computers to understand just what it was saying, but suffice
to
say that it does seem to work better than the others I've tried.

Sigh. I once tried a RAM defrag program and was amazed at how much
available memory it was able to free. I eventually figured out what
it was doing. When it started, it would allocate a huge block of RAM
for scratch space. When it was done, it would magically free this
memory, claiming that it was salvage from program garbage collections.
Yep, it did, but the program the created the garbage was the RAM
defrag program.

But even
that one seems unable to recover the situation beyond about 75% usage. The
only way to get the memory back, and thus recover the speed of the
machine,
is to do a "Restart", which is a royal pain in the arse.

I help maintain a fairly reliable Windoze 7 machine that's up and
playing SNMP network monitor:

C:\> systeminfo | find "System Up Time"
System Up Time: 13 Days, 4 Hours, 58 Minutes, 27 Seconds
(...)
Total Physical Memory: 1,980 MB
Available Physical Memory: 1,030 MB
Virtual Memory: Max Size: 2,048 MB
Virtual Memory: Available: 1,996 MB
Virtual Memory: In Use: 52 MB
Page File Location(s): C:\pagefile.sys

No sign of any memory leaks. It normally stays up longer, but
everyone has been playing with updates and revisions, so the uptime
tends to be more than about 2 weeks.

So, is this just a poor characteristic of 7 that previous versions of
Windoze didn't suffer from ?

It's probably NOT Windoze 7. It's probably some application that
you're running. Download and install Belarc Advisor (free version)
and produce (don't post) a system report. Look down the list of
installed applications for a likely culprit for producing a memory
leak.
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Does anyone else have a similar problem, or
have found a way to resolve it ?

No problems, but if you want reliability, I suggest Ubuntu or one of
the other Linux distributions. If you're running a fairly basic set
of applications (Web, email, word processor, spreadsheet, etc), then
Linux will be a suitable replacement. If you run a bizarre mix of
eclectic utilities and apps, stay with Windoze 7. OS/X on a Mac is
also a good substitute, but will cost about twice as much as the
equivalent PC. Retraining your son on a new operating system might
also be useful, as it will keep him occupied and out of your workspace
for a few weeks.

Not looking for a long drawn-out discussion
on this - I can live with it.

Well, if you want a one-line answer, you could at least have warned me
or supplied a one-line question. Grumble.

Just interested to see if anyone better
qualified at this sort of thing than me, has a definitive answer.

I do this kind of stuff every day. I only see broken computers. I'm
sure there are users out there that have perfectly working machines,
but I never see them. That's the curse of being in the repair/support
biz. Also, if Microsoft ever produced a reliable product, I would be
out of business. The company motto is "If this stuff worked, you
wouldn't need me". It's on my biz card and all my stationary. Nobody
has ever disagreed (or cared).


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com

Lots of good stuff there Jeff. Thanks for your time and effort. Appreciated.
Anti-virus is Avast by the way. I have never had any problems with that, but
who knows ? T-Bird version is 3.1.7. Yes, machine does have an eclectic mix
of applications on it, so not really a suitable candidate for a beard and
sandals 'makeover' .... <G> Weather prog is "The Weather Channel desktop
weather". I have been running it for years, without any problems on previous
machines / Win OS's. Clock synchroniser is Dimension 4, again used for many
years, without issue. Just as a matter of interest, one of my main suspects
as a culprit is what I am using now as a news client, which is Windows Live
Mail. I used to use OE for all email and news on previous versions of OS,
but since having this Windoze 7, I am using T-Bird as a mail client only, as
it is useless at news (for me anyway) and Live Mail for news only, as I
don't like the way it handles email. I liked OE. It was simple, worked, and
did everything I wanted it to, and I rue the day that I lost that one-stop
solution.

Arfa

 

[Arfa Daily]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:ijsc2l$d6b$1@news.eternal-september.org...

No problems, but if you want reliability, I suggest Ubuntu or one
of the other Linux distributions. If you're running a fairly basic set
of applications (Web, email, word processor, spreadsheet, etc),
then Linux will be a suitable replacement.

That's the catch, of course. Operating systems other than Windows or
Macintosh don't have fancy software written for them.


...if Microsoft ever produced a reliable product, I would be out of
business.

Perhaps, but I run W2K, Word, and other Windows software without problems.
I
do agree, however, that Windows sometimes behaves Most Strangely, for no
obvious reason.

I have never had any real problems with Windows. I'm a fairly heavy user
compared to Joe Average, and have, over the years, had many varied and
exotic applications running on Windows machines with OS's from Win 3.1 right
up to Win 7. I know that it's not a very fashionable or approved position to
declare, but I actually quite like the Windows concept on the whole, and
would never indulge in Gates-bashing. I actually think that Windows has,
over the years, done more to expand the world of personal computing, and to
'standardise' application writing, than any other OS or platform.

Arfa

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 16:36:37 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

No problems, but if you want reliability, I suggest Ubuntu or one
of the other Linux distributions. If you're running a fairly basic set
of applications (Web, email, word processor, spreadsheet, etc),
then Linux will be a suitable replacement.

That's the catch, of course. Operating systems other than Windows or
Macintosh don't have fancy software written for them.

Mac and Linux certainly do have fancy software, just fewer choices,
and generally not as well supported by the authors or manufacturers.
I've lost count of how many times a Mac support request degenerated
into "you don't need to know" or "it should be intuitive". Similarly
for Linux, I've received "just modify the source code yourself if you
don't like it" from various authors. Unfortunately, Windoze is no
better with the traditional "just reinstall the entire operating
system" and it should fix the problem.
<http://www.LearnByDestroying.com/poetry/support.htm>
From my warped perspective, all the various platforms are 90% the
same. However, the 10% that's different will drive you nuts. Some
are better in specific areas, but overall, they all have (different)
problems.

Moral: You can't win.

...if Microsoft ever produced a reliable product, I would be out of
business.

Perhaps, but I run W2K, Word, and other Windows software without problems. I
do agree, however, that Windows sometimes behaves Most Strangely, for no
obvious reason.

Windoze is strange, but my customers are even stranger. If you can't
find a reason, a conspiracy will usually suffice as a suitable
substitute.

Allow me to suggest an easy upgrade to XP, which will probably run on
whatever ancient hardware you're using. WinFLP.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winflp>
I have it running on a Celeron 400MHz with 384 MBytes of RAM and a 4GB
CFL SSD drive. It's kinda slow, but does function. There are some
update issues as some of the most recent updates will not install.
Same with some current MS add-ons. For example, MSE (Microsoft
Security Essentials) will not install. It can also be installed
without Internet Exploder. It may not take you from the stone age to
the space age, but maybe half way to approximately the Renaissance.

I recently tried to use the above Celeron 400 for an ADS-B monitor.
WinFLP would run just fine, but the various ADS-B monitoring
application (SBS-1 Basestation) is a gigantic bloated monster, which
beat the virtual memory to death. I had to get a bigger machine, and
run the real XP version, to get it to play. Careful what you install.

For every improvement in hardware performance, there is an equal and
opposite decrease in speed provided by the software. In 1981, it took
me about 2-3 minutes to boot my 5150 IBM PC from the floppy disk. Roll
forward 30 years, and it still takes about the same time on my
Dore2Duo machine. This is not progress.




--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558