Hello,

I'm running Windows Me on a Dell PC (roughly 600 Mhz).  I typically
like to have the following open simultaneously:  Outlook 2000,
Internet Explorer, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Photoshop 6, Illustrator 8,
Symantec Antivirus, and Yahoo IM.

This seemed to be 1 application too much for my 256K memory, so I
upgraded to 512K.  Yet it still seems 1 application too much, even
though I doubled my memory.  What's going on?

Thank you.

Ed

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 20 Nov 2003 06:02 PST

Hello Esarkissian,
You may have a lot of start up programs running. If you type
'msconfig' in the 'Run' command under the Start button, then go to the
'Startup', you'll see how many programs activate as soon as you start
up Windows. Please tell us what have a check in the box. Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 20 Nov 2003 06:25 PST

I must correct a statement: 
"Please tell us what boxes have a check in them." 
Each program mentioned in the startup list has a box beside at its
left, and you can uncheck each one if necessary.

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 21 Nov 2003 13:11 PST

Hi techtor,

Thanks for looking at my question.  I have the following running in Startup:

Yahoo! Pager
ScanRegistry
TaskMonitor
POINTER
TCASUTIEXE
PCHealth
SystemTray
LoadPowerProfile
vptray
NvCplDaemon
nwiz
LoadPowerProfile
SchedulingAgent
*StateMgr
defwatch
rtvscn95
StillImageMonitor
Microsoft Office StartUp
HP 1170 FPB
Adobe Gamma Loader.exe

Can you please let me know what I can get rid of?  Thanks.

Ed

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Request for Question Clarification by techtor-ga on 28 Nov 2003 20:52 PST

Hello Ed,
Sorry for taking too long to reply!

After taking a look again at the programs you have open at once, it
does seem that you sure have a lot of graphic-intensive programs.
Photoshop plus Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Illustrator, that sure is
heavy stuff. I'll have to admit that now, I think your RAM may be
insufficient. If you can find another (or two, replace the two 256s)
512MB module, that might help. If you're using SDRAM though, I
understand it'll be hard to find.

Perhaps you could close certain programs to make way for the others.
Maybe Outlook 2000 while you're working, open it only when you're
checking for messages. Perhaps when you're working on only Flash
stuff, close Photoshop and Illustrator, and when illustrating close
the others. Even Yahoo Messenger has known to cause system crashes,
I've experienced them myself, so you can close that. I suppose though
you need that to communicate with your employer or client. I assume
you're reluctant to do any of these as well.

If you're still willing to remove some startup programs, you can just remove these:

Yahoo! Pager - Just open up Yahoo Messenger by yourself

TCASUTIEXE - So you have a 3COM Network card! Wow. Try disabling first
in network card software, if any, instead of unchecking in msconfig.
But see first if you need this software.

SchedulingAgent - Don't disable this by unchecking. Look for your
scheduled tasks (in Task Scheduler I believe) and cancel any task set
up there (or choose 'Stop using Task scheduler'). When you restart,
it'll be off.

Microsoft Office StartUp - You can uncheck this one.

Do tell me if any of this helps.

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Clarification of Question by esarkissian-ga on 15 Dec 2003 12:51 PST

I went ahead and removed what I could.  It seems from the comments
below the best solution is to upgrade my OS to Windows XP for better
memory management.  Thank you everyone.

All are acceptable answers, although I would suggest Techtor because
of his effort.  Thanks!

ed

Esarkissian,
Thank you for mentioning me, and I assume you mean to allow me to post
my answer. Thus, I take that risk. :) Actually, what Deicide and
Rodbwright have said are true, Windows 98 and ME have difficulty
managing memory in an efficient way, something that my esteemed
colleague, Feilong-ga (look him up here), once told me when we talked
about our Win98 computer hangups. This memory management problem was
rectified in WinXP, which is quite stable, though I still prefer Win98
because WinXP shed off some compatibility with older programs, and
Win98 installs and loads faster. But if you need to run multiple heavy
applications at once, I believe WinXP will help the most. Win ME, I
certainly agree that it is something to dislike because it has so many
bugs. Aside from Feilong-ga, other friends and acquaintances who are
tech-proficient have also told me Win ME was buggy, and they have
avoided it, saying only Win98SE or WinXP are the least problematic
systems to use - and most of them prefer Win98SE. :)

The method I suggested above was to reduce the number of startup
programs, so you can have more free memory for other programs. It
seems though that you had a lot of heavy programs running, so crashing
was quite inevitable. With the limited memory management capability of
Win ME and RAM that you have, making way for each program going to
WinXP might have been the best way to go. I'm wondering if downgrading
to Win98SE will help, since it has a lot less startup programs and
leaves a lot of free memory, but you're safe with Win XP.

Search strategy:
Actually, I used personal knowledge and the advice of a friend.

I hope this has been a most helpful answer. If you need anything else,
or have a problem with the answer, do please post a Request for
Clarification before rating and I shall respond as soon as I can.
Thank you.

Thank you Techtor, no further clarification is needed.  Looks like I
will have to upgrade to Win XP the first chance I get!  Thank you for
your efforts and advice.

Ed Sarkissian

There is a neat little program called MaxMem that miight help you. You
can download it for free here:
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/maxmem.htm

An old rule of thumb for Windows 98 was that for most practical
purposes 64MB was the most memory it could realistically manage and
that more meant very little.  Windows ME is known to be better, but it
still has the same basic architecture and limitations.  It's hard for
me to imagine that anything over 128MB is going to help performance at
all, certainly not 256MB or greater.

Honestly, Win ME sucks.  I used to have it and had exactly the same
problem as you are now.  Win ME doesn't handle memory more than 256MB.
 So, if you think you need more memory, you should upgrade your Win OS
to Win 2K or XP.  I did upgrade mine to Win XP Pro and 512MB memory
works fine.
In addition, here is a cool software I am using to take care of the memory.
It's Cacheboost: http://www.systweak.com/Cacheboost/

good luck

Perhaps this is a vcache problem? Check out the following link, it
might be worth a shot:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.asp&NoWebContent=1

Esarkissian,
Kind of you to give me a tip and 5 stars! I am thankful of your
appreciation of my efforts.