Available resources/memory problem in XP?

>If Windows manages the pagefile it will fill up with rubbish pretty
>quickly - change the settings to custom pagefile - set the minimum to be
>about 50% higher than your systems RAM and the max to be 250% system RAM and
>see how that affects things.

>"Andi B" <andi@theblacktower.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>

>>If Windows manages the pagefile it will fill up with rubbish pretty
>>quickly - change the settings to custom pagefile - set the minimum to be
>>about 50% higher than your systems RAM and the max to be 250% system RAM and
>>see how that affects things.

>
>
>Page file usage is *inversely* related to the amount of physical RAM.
>
>More RAM means less page file
>Less RAM means more page file
>
>The page file exists to compensate for the *lack* of sufficient RAM to
>meet the total memory requirements being placed on the computer.

>Is true, for any individual PC/user/usage pattern.
>
>For the set of 'all PCs in the world', it's a bit more complicated, and
>(historically) PCs with more RAM in also tended to need more page file
>(since most folks could only afford ~50% of their -maximum- memory
>requirement .. indeed, 99% of the time they only needed ~50% of the
>maximum, so buying more would have been stupid).
>
>These days this is less true - many people have over-equipped their PC
>with RAM just because it was cheap and easy to do so.

> Hi, I have been encountering a problem with Windows XP that looks much

> the problems that are well documented about Windows 9x, in that after

> use, it appears that I run out of system resources to open up new
> windows,etc.
>
> I have done searches, and see that this problem supposedly can't happen in
> Windows
> XP because of how it manages the resource pool. I will describe what is
> happening on my machine.
>
> I have a Dell 8250, 2.4Ghz, 80GB HD, 512MB RAM
> On the Windows drive (C) I have over 3 GB free space. My virtual memory
> setting is set to allow windows to manage it, and the pagefile is about
> 800mb.
>
> I do a LOT of window opening and closing during the day. Opening and
> closing 100's of chart windows in IE. At max, I have about 20 windows
> open, about 12 in IE. I have an Ameritrade ticker running, giving me
> streaming stock quotes. I also tend to have AOL 8.0 open, and sometimes
> Quicken. While this is a lot of activity, I am NOT running anything
> requiring very heavy resources like photo editing software for example.
>
> Eventually whether its in AOL or IE, or anywhere in windows, I get to the
> point where additional windows won't open. When it happens inside AOL, I
> get a message, "The operation cannot be completed due to low memory or

> drive space. Please close one or more windows and try again". If I then
> close a window or two, I can proceed for a while, eventually having to

> more windows. In IE, I'll click on a link to open in new window, and the
> window just refuses to open, unless I close other windows first. In

> panel, clicking on System refuses to bring up that window. Yesterday I
> opened Quicken and resources were so low that all the Quicken icons

> even able to display.
>
> When I bring up Windows task manager, it shows physical memory 523K,
> available 121K, System cache 236K. Kernel memory, total 45K, 33K paged,
> 12K nonpaged.
>
> So you see, these symptoms look to me exactly like the Windows 9x world of
> insufficient system resources, a problem which supposedly can't happen in
> XP.
>
> Can anyone explain what is happening here that is keeping me from opening
> new windows?
>
>