how much ram should my system be using?

[garytmib]

i have a dell pIII 1 gig, 20 gig 7200 rpm hd, nvidia 32meg geforce, xp pro, 256mb pc133, sb live value, and cable modem. at fresh boot with nav 2002, zone alarm, and norton system utilities running i have 140mb of ram left. does this sound reasonable for ram usage? tia

 

[IgoByte]

Norton is a memory/resource hog, so you're about right. I don't know what nav 2002 is though. You might want to consider getting another 256MB stick, because it might give your system a nice little boost, running WinXP Pro.

 

[garytmib]

thanks igobyte,

nav2002 is norton antivirus 2002

 

[jcmoran]

As long as you're running any incarnation of XP, my advice is to have as much RAM memory as you can afford up to 1Gb. 512Mb will do anything you need it to, today, but who knows what you'll be faced with tomorrow.

For those reading this who are running ME or older, you can't use any more than 512Mb. The older versions of Windows doesn't know how to act with more than that.

 

[BigT0e]

I think having 140 megs of ram is plenty. Of course, if you are running video editting software and/or 3d design programs then you might consider another 256 stick like IgoByte said. Or you can be a little punk like me and just buy a gig, lower your virtual memory and be done with it.

 

[Cuular]

JcMoran you are totally incorrect, you can run older versions of windows with more than 512MB, you just have to add 2 parameters into the system.ini telling it to only use a certain amount for caching purposes, or tell it to only use a certain amount period. For a clue on how to do this see the following link:Microsoft hack for large memory

Another way is to do the following:
How to get windows9X/ME to behave with large amounts of memory

 

[jcmoran]

<< JcMoran you are totally incorrect, you can run older versions of windows with more than 512MB, you just have to add 2 parameters into the system.ini telling it to only use a certain amount for caching purposes, or tell it to only use a certain amount period. >>


Thanks for setting me straight on this. What you're saying does sound like you can use more than 512mb of RAM on the older Windows systems, but you have to tell the operating system to ignore all but 512mb. If this is correct, it would seem that I was too. If this is not correct, I stand corrected.

 

[Cuular]

The firs tlink is one that tells the computer to ignore any above 768MB, the second link is one that allows the OS to use all of it that is there.

Yes you do have to know to update the system.ini, but the OS will support it. To me the first option is kinda stupid, but I guess there might some use for it. On my systems doing the second one to limit the amount of vcache used was the winner and allowed win98/me to use 1gb ram.