Another RAM Upgrade Problem 1

[miner00]

I am a Mechanical Engineer and run 3 different CAD systems. The biggest memory hog tends to run my system at around 450MB of RAM (when I had 384MB). Until recently, I was trying to squeeze by on 384MB of RAM and steal the rest off of my hard drive. I have now been upgraded to 512MB, but my system seems slower now than it ever was and runs at 550MB.

I am running a Compaq Deskpro Workstation (with the SCSI 133MHz hard drive bus) PIII 733MHz processor. I was upgraded to 512MB of RAM made by Kingston. I am running Windows NT4 SP6 Workstation.

I have heard that NT has an upper limit of 256MB of RAM, but I have not been able to verify that. Any thoughts on this would be helpful.

miner

 

[jared5494]

hello,

It seems to be one of 2 things possible:
1. Bad memory. The first thing that goes wrong when bad memory is installed is an incorrect amount of memory being registered. I would suggest calling your memory provider and asking them for a DOA request. Most will replace it for free.

2. What operating system are you using? Windows 98se will not register any memory size over 512mbs. So if you have 550 mbs.... it might not be seeing the last stick of memory and that could cause a malfunction in the operating system, thus slowing it down

hope that helped,
jared5494

 

[cdogg]

jared,
miner00 stated that he's running NT 4.0 w/ SP6

miner00,
As far as I know, NT 4.0 is fine with large amounts of memory. I've been around systems that are stable with over 768MB of RAM. However, I'm guessing that the problem here may have something to do with the efficiency of your swap file, or a problem with the CAD application itself. Try tweaking the swap file and make sure you have at least 200MB of free space on the system partition.

If the apps are compatible with newer versions of Windows, I highly suggest upgrading to Win2K if nothing else seems to work. ~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[CitrixEngineer]

NT has an upper limit running into Exabytes (according to MS official documentation).

In reality it has a ceiling of 4Gb (32-bit addressing). 2Gb of that you will never use, because it's reserved.

Maybe the RAM sticks are incompatible - or did you alter your virtual memory settings under the common misconception that adding more RAM means you can have a smaller swap file?

Your system looks fairly well specced, and 512Mb RAM should give it a boost (Windows NT loves RAM!). If the system seems to be slowing down, I'd suspect something disk related;

- Maybe you're running out of space.
- Maybe you have a large accumulation of temporary files.
- Maybe you have >40 files in %systemroot% (c:\ on most systems)
- Maybe you need to defrag - there is at least one defragmenter available for NT4.

I'm confused by your statement Quote /"...and runs at 550MB.
"/Quote

What is running at 550Mb?


Hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[miner00]

CitrixEngineer, sorry for the confusion. When I am running the program, I can check the task manager and the performance graph shows that the computer is using 550MB of RAM. I interpret this as meaning it is taking as much as possible out of the physical RAM and the rest of the needed memory is being pulled off of my hard drive. Someone please correct me if I am mistaken.

I have been able to clear some space on my hard drive and that seems to help. I have struggled to keep it over 200MB of open space in the past. Unfortunately I have a fairly small C: drive and it fills up quickly. I have a defrag tool and use it regularly.

What is the significance of <40 files in c:\??? This is entirely possible.

miner

 

[CitrixEngineer]

You should aim to have at least 10% of your hard disk free at all times, IMO.

If you do not have an absolute minimum amount of space equal to the largest file or the total of the combined files that you open, then NT will fall over. Windows creates a &quot;hard copy&quot; of every single file that you work on, copy/paste history, inserts, templates, etc.

The memory usage that Task Manager shows is the total of physical RAM + Virtual Memory (paging file). If you look at the Performance tab, you will see an entry called Physical memory, which shows how much actual RAM is available. This number will typically be smaller than Mem Usage, but probably around 64-128Mb, depending on what else you are doing. If you have loads of programs open, then it might well hit the Total.

I would guess that after you installed your RAM, you did not enlarge the paging file, or that you left Windows to manage it. My recommendation is that the paging file should be set at max and min of 1.5 x RAM, whatever other people say ;-)

If your hard disk is struggling to maintain 200Mb free, and you have 512Mb RAM, then I would suggest an aggressive housekeeping session/system backup or a new hard disk.

The <40 files in root is an ancient issue - I couldn't immediately find any links on it and, to tell the truth, it may not exist any more - but, like a lot of things, it is an ingrained habit of mine to check for things like this. It used to be (at least) that if this limit was exceeded, then the operating system would start to slow down noticeably. I still find that if I adhere to this and move file out of root, then systems seem to perform better.

I hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[buffbison]

Sometimes cheaper memory can do that as well. If you purchased memory such as valueram, or a low-grade type of memory, that can cause havoic in servers and other realtime critical computing applications. And to my knowledge, PNY memory has made several thousand batches of memory modules that are currently not compatible with most OEM manufactorers, like compaq and dell. If you purchased the PNY, valueram, low-grade (generic) memory, then i would advise to you to find some quality ram, such as samsung, kingston (not valueram), or crucial. You can use the crucial memory selector by clicking on this link.

http://wwww.geocities.com/dell_talk/crucialmemory.html

here is my homepage.

http://www.geocities.com/dell_talk/home.html

 

[vick53]

OK I have a HP 8754C pavilion
it came with Win Me and 128 meg ram
,,My problem since day 1 ,I will be working along and all of the sudden <It doesnt matter what program I am working in ,for example &quot;Word ,IE5.5 ,PCAnywhere &quot;and it locks up .I mean nothing works .the mouse is frozen < and I have to do a hard shutdown and restart ..I have uninstalled ME and loaded Win 2k with sp3 it was fine for awhile and then all of the sudden it started freezing up again << Sol I ordered some new RAM from Crucial I bought 2 memoery sticks totalling 512 and it wouldnt even boot up>>I got the blue screen of death Referring to the computers ACPI setup
so I put the old memory back in plus 1 of the new memory stick and it was fine for awhile and then Bam it freezes up again >>Any suggestions