home computer problem, need to clean memory - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

olpos · #1 03-09-2004, 11:16 AM

hi, i hope some one can help. my computer,hp with2000me,pentium 2 chip, is almost full memory wise. only 9 percent left. although i will be buying extra memory,i have a few questions
can i clean up what i have right now before i get the extra memory.
when i get the extra memory they sell some pretty large drives. will buying the most memory be the best thing to do?
will it slow down things? will be buying the faster 7200rpm drive.
this will go in a slot inside the computer, not stand alone.
at the store i see some that are 80gigs and even more.
is there a down side to the larger ones.
i do plan on putting in a lot of photos.
the ram? is about 170
can i do some thing else to make this hp better without lots of money?
i hope some one can make sense of what this letter is trying to say. not very good at computer talk
thank you
rich

N8Scafe · #2 03-09-2004, 11:24 AM

Getting yourself more RAM is the easiest thing (and the cheapest) to improve your computer's performance. If you've only got 170 Megs of RAM, I would look into upgrading that. I personally have 640 Megs of RAM, and know plenty of people that have over a gig of RAM. One place to shop for RAM is at crucial.com.

As for the hard drives, no there is no reason you shouldn't get a larger hard drive. I haven't ever personally upgraded my hard drive, so I don't know about size issues as far as installation goes. If you have FireWire, look into getting an external hard drive.

Edit: I just noticed you said you're running Windows ME? Get rid of that if you can and get yourself XP or even just standard 2000. ME is widely regarded as the worst Windows operating system ever created. That will probably also help your computer out.

Charlie Porter · #3 03-09-2004, 11:32 AM

Olpos

There are several good memory managers out there. I have been using one called MemTurbo for several years now (www.MemTurbo.com). You should also defragment your hd(s) on a regular basis. More memory and a larger drive will help if you plan to put a lot of pictures on the drive. You can send me a PM if you wish. I also live in San Diego.

Charlie

jpb5151 · #4 03-09-2004, 06:51 PM

I'm confused about whether you want hard drive space, RAM, or both.

Anyhow, if you buy a bigger hard drive you might want to check on your motherboard's BIOS to see if it supports larger drives. If it can't, maybe it can be upgraded (you'd check with the BIOS manufacturer, then download and install the update). If it can't even be upgraded, you can always buy a PCI card to handle the larger drive, taking the place of the onboard IDE. It's just something to check; I've seen it happen a couple times.

Good luck.

pentoman · #5 03-10-2004, 10:49 AM

olpos - I see you are looking at buying a hard disk - bear in mind that, whilst it is a form of memory, it is not usually referred to as memory, so try not to use that term to avoid the confusion!

No disadvantages to getting a bigger one. 80Gb is about the best space/dollar at the moment. It will almost certainly fit fine in your PC.

olpos · #6 03-10-2004, 11:15 AM

thanks for the replys, did not notice that i put it under diesel discussion.

guess i am not sure about memory which is 176.0 mb of ram.
when i checked it today it says their is 17 percent free. do i need to clean this up or add more ram. last wek it said 9 percent left.
at first i thought it was hard drive space,but found that today and their is plenty of space left. only about half used .
so now i seem to be dealing with a ram problem,not the hard drive. this is new to me so i am as confused as i sound. the hard drive can be delt with later,but now need to find out about the ram problem? . is it over full and need cleaning or an upgrade.
my file system is 32 bit if that helps
thanks for the replys, just a newbee at the computer part
rich

pentoman · #7 03-11-2004, 02:39 PM

It's OK everyone's a newbee at one time or other!

Your RAM is completely empty (100% free) when you first turn your compter on - it's only when windows loads, and then you load up programs such as internet explorer, Microsoft Word etc that it 'uses up' your memory. As soon as you close these programs they will free the memory again.

So in short, the amount of memory free at one time is only a reflection of how much you're doing on your PC at that time.

Also, it is like a car in that, you could say you have 5 people in your 300E and it has '0% space free', but actually with some squashing and moving stuff around you could fit another person in.

Then you could move some people into the trunk and fit even more in - it wouldn't ever be 'full'. However it takes time to move people into and out of the trunk.

Windows does precisely this itself, moves stuff around so that you're never full.

However in Windows, the inside of the car is 'memory' and the trunk is a 'Swap file'

The more memory, the less you have to do the slow 'trunk/swap file' stuff. So you could get more if you wanted your PC to be quicker while doing lots of stuff at once.

sorry if this is too much for you!

good luck

Rusty

olpos · #8 03-11-2004, 02:55 PM

thank's rusty,
well that does make a lot of sense. i will be doing an upgrade so i can use what i want. don't know if it helped but i cleaned out my recycle bin. at least that helped the hard drive.
i am now running at 17 percent free ram space.
just got dsl a few months back and had to increase ram at that point. maybe dsl is eating up a bunch of space.
i will just bump up the ram and should have a better buffer incase i need it
thanks for the response
rich

Rick Miley · #9 03-11-2004, 02:57 PM

The only complaint I see from your original post is that memory is 9% free. But this is not necessarily a problem as Windows will always keep as much stuff as possible in physical memory to avoid using the swap file (fake, or virtual memory on the hard drive). Is there some other complaint you have such as poor performance, or inability to start some programs? Or is this just because of some poking around and you didn't like the 9% figure? If the latter, then the best thing to do is leave it alone until you get some sort of error message or the system slows down.

olpos · #10 03-11-2004, 03:19 PM

hi rick, the reason i was worried was i got a warning message that some of my programs may not open or run slow. the warning said there was less than 10 percent left,which i thought it meant the hard drive. still learning about this stuff. no i try not to look for problems that are not their. as in cars ,if it ain't broke,don't fix it. also i have been having a hard time getting on line and finding the computer off line by itself. because i just got a new digital camera,and loading a bunch of pictures, i ASSUMED the hard drive was filled up.
i noticed a lot of people on this forum that were very sharp at computers , so that is why i tried here first. i am learning and getting better at this.
thanks for the response
rich

Rick Miley · #11 03-11-2004, 03:57 PM

So how much physical memory (not hard drive size) does the machine have? If you're not sure where to look, Start->Settings->Control Panel->System. While you're there, click the Advanced Tab, then find Performance and Virtual Memory (if I remember correctly) and tell us what your swap file size is.

olpos · #12 03-11-2004, 04:19 PM

hope this is right
176.0 ram
virtual 32 bit
file size 32 bit
read ahead, full , 917 kb
system restore, full , in incraments of 64 k bites
no pcmcia card installed
no disk compression
no swap file size, cannot find it
thanks
rich

Rick Miley · #13 03-11-2004, 04:27 PM

176 MB of RAM is fine for Windoze ME - I have a machine at home that runs fine with 128. But you really need to find the swap file size. Poke around the Advanced tab until you find it. I just checked my Win2000 machine here at work and Microsoft calls it a "Paging file."

olpos · #14 03-12-2004, 11:05 AM

hey rick,thanks for the help. cannot find that paging file or any like it. at this point i'll stop until i can find that file.
think i have the book for the me system some wheres.
when i find it i'll continue with this.
thanks
rich