Memory leaks-whassat? and how to stop them

Problem1:
I think my laptop has a memory leak (every time I startup it takes longer and longer to load the OS and to get ready) - admittedly, I'm not 100% certain what a memory leak is, but I think this might be the problem??
I have run A/V and trojan scan's and the computer is clean. I have also defragmented the harddisk, with no apparent improvement.

Admittedly, the harddisk has only 12% free space left (could this be slowing it down so much at startup??) I suspect JV16 or Cleandisk which I d/l from MG might be the culprits as I have some directories with randomly generated filenames on the harddrive and these directories contain mostly system files such as .dll files, but I'm afraid to delete these directories in case I delete something I shouldn't. The setup I'm running is W2K Pro with 135MB memory (I can't find anything particularly suspicious under processes either!) Can anyone suggest a course of action or some diagnostic/repair utility?

Many thanks in advance for your advice

Problem2
On my OTHER i.e. desktop PC I have just done a W2K clean install and want to make sure that I do not have to undertake any drastic measures should a similar problem crop up.What would you suggest e.g. should I create a partition for applications to isolate future problems without having to reformat the entire harddrive? I tend to experiment a lot with software downloads from MGs...

 

Hi wodnik!
Please take this with a grain of salt, since I am fairly new at computering. (Wait for others to reply as well).
As I understand it, "memory leaks" are when applications you run do NOT give back their part of the RAM for use by other apps when they quit running. Its a Microsoft thing, I think. A reboot should take care of that. Also, if you do not wish to reboot, you could try out a RAM defrag program (yes-to defrag system memory, not the HDD), but that is above my head-can't figure them out myself.

Also, seperate, logical partitions should be great for data, another for apps, maybe another just for the swap (paging) file. I have read where this can help cut down on "contagion fragmentation"

Hey, BTW-you Brits have a new Knight:
Sir Mick Jagger!!! I wish the House of Lords would have knighted all the lads!
Cheers

 

First thing I would check is what you have loading up on the startup. I'm not real familiar with Win2k but I think it runs MSConfig just like WinXP. Just go to start/run and input msconfig and hit enter. Then go to the startup tab and uncheck items you don't actually need running at startup (like MSN Messenger and a bunch of other stuff). If in doubt as to what you can and cannot uncheck, you should be able to uncheck everything there without permanent damage to your system. If it turns out you need part of that for say your virus software, you can always check it again to bring it back. You can even do this through safe mode if need be. You can also run AdAware and one of the other Spyware software that you can find here on MG. This should all help out. Check also the startup folder in start/all programs/startup to be certain there is nothing there as well. Hope this helps.

 

WIn 2k did not include msconfig... ms decided to take it out of that version. To edit your startup programs youll need to goto the registry key or use this program - http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=619

 

You may find this of interest:

http://www.techweb.com/winmag/columns/explorer/2000/11.htm

 

The short answer to that is a definite YES. That's an awfully small amount of free space for the drive to work with, the smaller it gets the harder the drive has to work. Are you using the built-in defragger? If so, a third-party defragger such as Diskeeper would also allow you to defrag your paging file. I would not be surprised if it was severely fragmented, which reduces performance. I think you're on the right track with using the CleanDisk proggie, it would be a good idea to clean up your disk to get that free space up to 20%-25%.

You'd also benefit from more RAM, but a utility such as FreeRamXP Pro will help you with what you've got. You can set it to defrag and increase your amount of free RAM when it falls below a certain level.

 

Bit Too Big

Guys thanks for the advice, BUT - can someone propose a disk defragmenter proggie that is smaller than the 17.5MB Diskeeper suggested by the link above!

Also any recommendation for an alternative to MG's Clean Disk (which seems to have a few bugs in the registry cleaner section and is really a resource hungry monster - and possibly even a culprit of my original problem since I THINK it may be creating some kind of huge backup log directory)

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download809.html