On 2 Mar 99, at 22:15, Dennis Thiel wrote:

> Joseph H. Bishop wrote:
> >I would recommend that you elect  to set your own virtual memory
> >in win98... set it to a value  equal to  approx  2.5 times your
> >ram installed in the system and see what happens....
>
> I have 128MB RAM. A 320 MB swap file would be overkill. In fact,
> with this much physical RAM, I should need less virtual memory.

  How much swap file gets allocated depends on your application load.
It doesn't depend on how much real RAM you have.

  Joseph's suggestion of 2.5x physical RAM is based on the assumption
that the installed RAM capacity is "adequate for application load".  If
you have more RAM than that installed, a 2.5x multiple is, as Dennis
says "overkill".

  When an application has R/W memory allocated to it (either at
application start-up, or during execution), corresponding space will be
allocated in the swap file (unless virtual memory is turned off), so
that the systems guarantees that it has reserved disk space to swap
that data out.  Adding more real RAM will reduce the need to swap, but
Windows will still have allocated that space.
  So while increased physical RAM decreases the *use* of the swap file,
it doesn't do anything for its *size*.

[Original question]  Resources are objects allocated in memory that
belongs to the system, but on behalf of other processes.  The approach
to Win 3.x compatibility that Win 9x takes has two important
implications:

(a) the total space available for resources is limited, and does not
increase when RAM is added, and

(b) the system cannot track which process is using which resources, so
applications *must* release all resources they use.

  A failure to address (b) is a common application bug called a
"resource leak".  It sounds like *something* you run has this problem --
make sure you're running the most recent versions of everything, in
case it has been fixed.
  [Simply watching the resource usage when a program starts won't quite
do it, but if resources take another hit as you start additional
instances -- without rebounding when you stop them -- then you may have
found the culprit.]

  BTW, implication (a) is why I occasionally run into low resources on
my 9x box when I try to use it the way I do my NT 4.0 Workstation.
NT's approach addresses these problems, probably at the cost of a
little speed in 16-bit apps.

David G

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