PlusIT,
thanks for the tips.
how can I upgrade to 64bit ?
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XP Laptop performance degrades with 4mb RAM over 2mb RAM, why ?
About a month ago, I get an extra 2mb RAM for my laptop which already had 2mb RAM. Because the laptop runs XP Pro, it can only recognize 3mb RAM, see attachment. It is an IBM T61p
My system runs usually no less than 1.3 mb Phys Mem, usually around 1.5mb.
However, the performance of my PC is significantly worse than before !
I thought I would get used to it and things would work out but it's been very consistently worse.
Before I got the upgrade, I would have 15 - 20 windows open, and the Phys Mem would run at around .6mb to 1.1mb.
Now, I only get around 10 - 12 windows open, despite having the 1.5mb Phys Mem avail.
The focal point seems to be Internet Explorer. Usually if I try something and it doesn't work, I'll shut down IE and then my function works. This is very consistent. I definitely cannot have more than one IE window open (IE-7)
I am a software developer so I have a variety of tools that I use and 15 - 20 windows is normal for me.
The 4mb phys mem where only 3mb is recognized doesn't seem to be able to handle the memory management.
What do you think ?
Desktop people here have tweaked various configuration items and they're ready to take it back to 2mb RAM - as am I
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Answers
Also check your page file settings and post them here.
If you right-click "My Computer" then click "Properties" you will see a window with tabs across the top.
Click on the "Advanced" tab.
You will see three buttons below, the top button in the "Performance" area, labeled "Settings" - click on that guy.
A new window, called "Performance Options" will appear.
This also has three tabs, click the middle tab, also labeled "Advanced"
On here, your processor scheduling should be set to "Programs" and your memory usage should also be set to "Programs".
At the bottom, you will see a section called "Virtual Memory" - click the "Change" button.
Record what it is currently set at, and then (if it is not set this way to begin with) change it to "Custom Size" and make both the minimum and the maximum "4096".
The rule of thumb on this is normally to set the page file at 2x memory, but with the amount of RAM you have, this should be more than enough assuming you are running programs that are written properly.
If you ever get a message that you are running out of virtual memory, you can up this, but again make both values the same number.
__________________________
A couple of other questions... did you do ANYTHING else to the computer after installing the new RAM? Any updates or patches?
Can you give us an idea of what programs you have running? I.E., if you have 20 windows running, are 10 of them Internet Explorer?
Which version of IE are you running? Were you running this version prior to upgrading?
When you run IE, do you run everything in multiple tabs, or do you launch separate instances of the browser? (Separate windows).
Is there a reason that you are not using Firefox? www.getfirefox.com
Can you do a test for us? This will take an hour or so....
Take out all of the RAM that you have in the machine, and write down the information on it. Note which was the old, and which is the new, and post it here.
Now, put the original RAM back in the machine, by itself, and boot up. Launch your 15-20 windows, and observe the behavior.
Now, shut down again and take out the original RAM and put in the new RAM by itself. Repeat the observation step.
I am assuming that you only have 2 sticks of RAM, is that true?
rxfoster,
thanks for all the tips . . . here's some info
Virtual memory is set to Custom = 4092, 4092 (this is one of the settings the Desktop people did)
after installing RAM, no other updates or patches - I noticed the non-boost right away.
Corporate requires IE, but I can try FF exclusively to see if that works ok, but many corporate sites are only configured for IE
- now running IE-7 (with tabs)
- For you test, sounds good, but I really can't risk it as it's a corporate machine, and I'm a consultant. But I will suggest it to them.
When running my 20 windows, it was like
- 1 windows explorer
- 3-4 pl sql developer (for Oracle development)
- 3-4 telnet sessions to Unix
- 2-4 Outlook (including Office Communicator)
- 3-4 IE-6 (no tabs), then recently we switched to IE-7 (tabs) but that was before the memory upgrade
- 1-2 FireFox
- 2-3 Informatica (ETL development tool)
- 1-2 Access (time tracking, To Do List)
- 1-2 Word
- 1-2 Excel
- Paint
Would it be possible for you to run Task Manager and take a screenshot? (right click taskbar and click "Task Manager" or press [CTRL+SHIFT+ESC] to launch it)
Once it is up, click on View and then Select Columns. Check the boxes shown in the image I have attached. Also, at the bottom of the Task Manager, make sure "Show processes from all users" is checked.
Once you've got that set up, see if you can organize the columns so all the data is visible at one time (You will most likely need to maximize the program to do this). Once you get it set, sort by the Mem Usage column until it is in descending order. If all the processes don't fit on the screen, that's fine, we should be able to see all of the major players with this view.
Now, once that is complete, minimize the Task Manager and start working. Open whatever you normally open, and once it gets to a serious bog-point, bring up the Task Manager and screenshot it.
You might take a couple of samples of this view, especially if you notice several different programs topping the Mem Usage column at different times.
- capture-16092009-110043.jpg
- 27 KB
Task Manager Settings
rxfoster, got it, excellent.
Tracking now and will go here when I see a slowdown.
Usually what happens is I try something simple (like "File, Exit" from the telnet session), it won't do it, I close IE, and then it does it.
This will help me assess what's going on.
right now, Phys Mem Avail = 1.28 GM; iexplore.exe = .5GB, firefox = .2GB
Sounds good!
One more thing to try, there is a plug-in for Firefox called IETab.
You can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org
Once installed, if you navigate to a site that is not functioning properly in Firefox, you can click the little Firefox icon in the lower right, and bango, it's running in IE... without opening another browser.
So, basically, you've got both browsers in the one package. And it is literally calling IEXPLORE.exe when you use IETab to load the page.
You might see if the memory usage skyrockets in Firefox the same way it does in IE.
Just thought of something else, have you completely blown out all of your IE history, cache, etc recently?
iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer, explorer.exe is Windows Explorer. MS likes to make things as unclear as possible hahaha...
If you have IETab running, you will still see iexplore.exe running. One thing to try, however, is to shut down both browsers and give it 30 seconds or so. Do you still see iexplore.exe running?
If not, bring up Firefox, and open some IETabs, and see if it grabs the same .5 GB of RAM.
Another thing to give a shot is to reboot, and once your machine is fully booted (drive activity stops, no hourglass, start menu is highly responsive) check your Task Manager then and see what is running. You should certainly not see iexplore.exe anywhere.
From that point, launch Firefox alone and proceed as normal. See if anything changes.
Also, have you tried to run everything BUT your browser and see if that seems okay?
update: I'm back up to 18-20 windows open !
I use FF primarily, the add-on for IE is great.
Sometimes when I close IE it still shows up in Task Manager.
And even today, I couldn't do "Alt-Edit-Find" on an application (the menu wouldn't open), but then I closed IE, and then I could do "Alt-Edit-Find" no problem.
So IE seems to be the biggest culprit, and I seem to now be taking advantage of the additional memory I got.
Well, perhaps these can help:
http://johnhaller.com/jh/m
http://www.howtogeek.com/h
You know... just in case you need Firefox to look like IE.... **whistles**
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by: PlusITPosted on 2009-09-16 at 07:05:16ID: 25345681
Hi,
First and foreall you are running a 32bit version that's why it can't see all the memory. Upgrade to 64bit if you want to benefit from 4GB of ram.
The modules that were allrdy in were these the same models as the new ones? If you have 4 memory modules and one is slower, the total memory will run at the slowest speed.
If you remove the extra 2GB do you get your normal speed again, if not you have another problem.
I can also advice to use memtest to check for errors on the modules -> http://www.memtest.org/