Getting the most for my RAM

Hi,

I hope you can help me out, and please forgive me for pretty completely being a novice.

I'm really really not a computer geek, but I use a lot of applications on my home computer and would really like it to function well. I just got a new hard drive, and bought additional RAM to go with it for my old Dell 4000 Inspiron.

But, I would have thought it would be appreciably faster than the old hard drive (20 gigs, from the factory, w/ 3 GB partioned for C: (heh, remember when that was plenty for system files?).

Anyway, I thought that maybe a RAM scavenger would make it work faster, so I installed FreeRAM XP Pro, and it tells me I have 148 MB free out of 320. Seems like a lot of non-used memory ... but, in the readme text at the start is says that having more available might make the computer have to swap space on page files ... but why'd I invest in all that memory for? What would happen if I increase the size of the page files (I sometimes run Dragon Naturally speaking and I needed to increase the size of the page files to get it to work properly ... but that was the old system 2 years ago, and I did it at my IS guy's suggestion). I haven't got a clue.

I also got the system program so I could tell you all what my set up is ... so here you go:

OS: Win2K Pro, service pack 4
motherboard: PIIIE, 850 MHz
system memory: 320 MB
BIOS type: Phoenix
video adapter: Mobility M3 (8MB)
3D accelerator: ATI Rage Mobility M3
hard drive: hitachi 80 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/10
Oh, and I use a T1/LAN, Dlink NIC.

Yeah, I suppose what I'm hoping for are tips on getting the most performance I can from my computer, and still be able to run about 6 applications at once (browser, email, wordperfect, excel, powerpoint, AIM, norton, real player). Yeah, dreaming is free ... but if it can be done I would like to.

Thanks in advance for your help,

E.

 

You might want to try somthing like Cacheman XP to apply some tweaks. Disable executive paging, unload DLLs. I'd also use it to chance your virtual memory settings to suit your needs

 

Hm. Well, if I pass a test in two weeks that I need to pass to stay employed I'll think about buying the registration copy for the extra whizbang functions ...

Re DLLs, I wouldn't have any ideas which ones I could lose without killing my computer again ... just killed it recently, and I think the IS guy would throttle me if I killed it again ...

Thanks though GF. )

 

No, I mean, in Cacheman XP... Under the "tweaks" button... you can select Disable Executive Caching and Unload DLLs from Memory. Two of the best tweaks for getting the most out of your memory, other than optimising your Virtual Memory.

For that system, I'd use about 900MB of virtual memory In the unregistered version you can let Cacheman XP manage your Virtual Memory.

 

Heh. So Much Faster.

I couldn't find the virtual memory option in CachemanXP, but I did change it in performance options ... it was at 450 MB ...

Thank you GF. You rock!

 

Hi Goldfish .. just reading through on this post and the cacheman soft... if i go to Windows task manager/processes .. and if i right click there and set priority is that functioning the same as the cacheman software or is it bandwidth priority usage.. ???