> the best way to quickly clear RAM ?

Best: turn computer off
2nd best: ReBoot it

Maybe you should explain what problem you're having which leads you to believe that flushing RAM is a good idea.

Incidentally, Windows is fine at memory management, but it can't fix the problems of poorly-written applications or drivers--if an application allocates memory and never frees it then Windows can't do anything about the problem, because it can't know for certain that the allocated memory is no longer required.

Damn - why didn't I think of that.  Or more to the point, why didn't I think to mention it as 'not applicable' in the initial post !

Hey - I thought this was Experts-Exchange, not Experts-Abuse !!!   :o)

No, I'm already doing that too frequently, to solve the REAL issue (sluggish performance) - but for now, all I want is to know how to free up the RAM, just to rule that out of the equation.

Hey - can I DEDUCT points from you for that suggestion !  ;-)  Good one.

>  to actually release memory is no longer required

This is the job of the OS, in this case NT.  memory no longer required is already released, so there is nothing left for you to do

>  to cause a forced roll-out, and clear it that way.

same answer as above

>  NT architectures were much tidier with RAM management - is that the case ?

yes

>  Or is Windows just poor in this area ?

yes
(also)
One major flame on the OS year after year is what are referred to as "memory leaks"

> a way to quickly allocate more memory - which obviously had the effect of rolling existing pages out to swap file

This, again is automaticall done in windows. What you may be thinking of is manually increasing the disk storage reserved for swapping out of RAM.  For NT, you look at properties under MyComputer. click the Performance tab and its 'chang' button for virtual memory. Make it bigger. On any drive. Reboot and more pages can be pushed off to HD so old programs still running do not get in your way. Note that there is a tradeoff, the pages on HD are accessed more slowly, so overall access to all applications will decrease, so tread cautiously when changing the recommended settings.


Note the also on the Performance property page is a setting for foreground/background performance. there's a three-position slide. Keep it on the right for most applications you run, but this is another example where NT permits you to tune memory access to affect speed.

ditto pjknibbs comment.

pjknibbs,

That last post was addressed to SunBow.

The real problem is a sluggishness after about 2 hours, but I don't want to get into that right now - already posted a while back, and have been in touch with hardware manufacturer, trying to isolate (thanks though).

I just want for now to try some elementary troubleshooting - and I know there is  a command to grab memory, and thereby cause a roll-out.  I've used it with success before, but on W98.

(My place of business has disabled VB scripts, btw, as too insecure and unstable for our platforms.)

bye

SunBow,

Yes point taken - I think I would probably opt to restrict usage in a corporate network scenario, but this is just a stand-alone - and it's all mine !!!!!!!  Wha-ha-ha-ha  :)

Appreciate the idea about foreground v. background - I hadn't thought about that, although I don't think it's related, but .......

Thanks All

@Groover2000 how did you come up with those numbers?  48,000,000 =>  366MB (48000000*8/1024/1024)