Marv, when I boot up available resources are about 80% give or take a couple
of points.  There are system apps running that don't show up in
ctrl/alt/del, so a few percentage points may be those.  There is really no
purpose in leaving your antivirus on all the time, nor the Norton System
Doctor.  In fact, the only things I have running at startup are my firewall,
the hotkeys on my keyboard, the drivers for my Cirque touchpad, and HP
scanjet driver (only because it won't work without it). I have used Startup
Cop to shut everything off, and have removed lines from startup related to
programs I uninstalled.  Another way to cut down on resource usage would be
to cut the number of fonts you're loading at startup.  www.pcmag/utilities
has a little free app that does that.  If you're loading 200-300 fonts,
that's a lot of resources.

To find out what program is running just highlight the path in startup cop
and click details.  It will show you what it is. If you don't reboot for
several days it isn't unusual to see your resources drop.  Windows is famous
for not recovering resources, and you have some apps that are not letting go
as they should.  The only cures are to cut down on resources used at
startup, and to close programs when done so that you don't have a lot of
stuff on your taskbar.  It wouldn't hurt to reboot once a day either.  Is
there any reason to leave Eudora running all the time?  It is a notorious
resource hog.  I use Outlook 2K, which is also a resource hog, but I close
the program after I get my mail.  Rarely will I leave it running just so it
can automatically get my mail.  Kind of like the current energy crisis, you
just need to be chincy with your resources.


Joel,

Thanks for the info.

Last week I recorded the resources used by each of the items show in the
"Close Program Window". With only Explorer and Systray running 75%-80% were
available. I am assuming that 20% - 25% is being used by the Windows 98
Operating system. Is this a correct assumption?

The resource meter or Norton System Doctor use 3% each, Gator uses 4%,
Winfax modem uses 8%, Norton Protect uses 1%, Hotkey uses 1%, .......etc.
When I start Eudora Pro which uses 15% there is only 33% free and drops to
20% if I leave Eudora Pro on overnight.  The program seems to have a memory
leak. So I turn it off every night.

It is interesting that when I reboot the computer the resources available
are 55% and if I don't reboot for a day or two the resources drop to 45%
with no selected programs running. Does this indicate a memory leak in one
of the running utilities?

My next step is to associate all of the names in the Close Program Window
(CPW)  with the actual utility that is running. Names like AROMN32,
Runppdrv, Csinject. I can do this by loading each program and looking in
the CPW to see what was added but do you know of a better way to determine
what program is associated with each set of letters?

I have the "Startup Cop" utility you mentioned. I was trying to find a
solution that did not require  rebooting the computer each time. I'll try
to start as you suggested using "msconfig" and then add utilities and
record the usage.

Thanks again for your help.

Marv Trott



At 12:29 AM 6/14/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Date:    Wed, 13 Jun 2001 04:33:50 -0700
>From:    "Joel M. Blackman" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Increasing System & User Resources
>
>System resources refers to a fixed amount of memory that doesn't change no
>matter how much RAM you put in your machine.  With 196 Mb you have plenty
of
>RAM.  You could free up resources by using ctrl/alt/del to see what you
have
>running at startup. Highlight everything that's running one by one and
click
>end task.  With some you may have to wait for another dialog box to pop up
>with another end task button.  Turn off everything except "Explorer" and
>"systray".  Run the resource meter and see if that makes a difference.  You
>could also save some resources by not running the resource meter, which
>itself uses resources. If you have Win 98, go to start/run, type in
>"msconfig" without the quotes, hit enter, then go to the startup tab.
>Scroll down and uncheck the boxes of the stuff you don't want to run at
>startup except for "explorer" and "systray". Click apply and OK, then click
>Yes when it asks you if you want to restart now.  When Windows is running,
>use ctrl/alt/del to see if you did kill everything.  Some programs can
>launch themselves at startup from elsewhere in the registry, so killing
them
>this way is not always 100% effective.  If you were successful, use your
>resource meter one more time to see if there is a significant difference.
>If you have Win 95 you either need to edit your win.ini file in Notepad
>(i.e. you can put a semi-colon in front of each line of code that starts a
>program under "Run".  Safest and best way in both Win 95/98 to kill stuff
is
>go to this URL:  www.pcmag.com/utilities.  Download "Startup Cop".  It's
>free, and it will stop programs from loading at startup no matter where
they
>launch from.  Even better, it allows you to remove the line from startup.
>I've been using it since it was released, and I have Win 98.  You cannot
>increase your system resources, you can only try to keep them from being
>clogged up.

>On 12 Jun 2001, at 11:34, Marv Trott wrote:
>
>> I  have been monitoring the Resources with the MS Resource meter because
>> the computer reaction time often is slow. When this happens that there is
>> only 15-20% of the resources available although the only program I am
>> running is Eudora Pro e-mail. How can I increase these resources?

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