system resources low

hi all i have recently installed avast av and ZA fire wall i noticed that my system resources have droped a lot i maxed out my virutal memory to min 384 and max 640 i have w windows 98 machine with 256 megs of ram its a dell. i relize that since i changed from avg to avast and installed the fire wall i went from syatem resources of 92% to 87% on bootup and as i surf it drops fast like to mid. 60's would adding ram help all that much or is there a free av and firewall that is less of a hog that i could use

thanks in advance
Phil

ps. there is nothing in my system tray of startup except for the sound and task monitor icon.

 

Ram will not affect system resources.

Fatal flaw of 9x. Limited resources.

 

thanks for the reply adr can you recommend any freeware programs that may be less resource demanding. Also i am using a router is a software firewall really gonna help that much.
thanks again
Phil

 

thank you for the reply star17 i will do just that

thanks again
Phil

 

Hey mbler, do you use any ram enhancers/tweak applications like cacheman or any of the other drive utilities here at MG? I wasn't a big believer in ram optimisers until I tried cachman, but it definitly speeded up my browser (slimbrowser) quite a bit. Might be worth a look. Also just a basic thought: have you defragged lately? I say all this because I ran ZA and Avast on a win98 system with only 196 megs of ram with no problems.

 

hi Bill thanks for the reply i have defraged in the last 2 weeks and no i dont use any of the utillities for enhancment if possible would you tell me what one you might recommend.

thanks
Phil

 

I used cacheman (the link in my last message above). It's the older version and will work on all windows platforms. The newer one listed in system utilities only works with win2000 and up. It's pretty easy to use. Read the read me file and help listings, of course and as always be cautious and if you don't understand something don't do it until you do understand it.

 

thanks again for the reply bill i will indeed give it a try.

thank you.
Phil

 

Hi rmbler, just out of curiosity, what do you use to display your resources. What do the figures 92/87/low 60's refer to? (GDI?) On W98SE I bootup with c:\windows\rsrcmtr.exe installed as an updateable (is there such a word?) icon bottom right of screen. Just checked it now (hold mouse pointer over it) and with ZAPro and AVG and other stuff it reads System 42, User 42 and GDI at 52. Everything still runs OK at these figures. I don't worry until the green bars change colour and resources fall really low. Wish there was a way to force resources to update like Maxmem does for available RAM instead of having to shutdown programs to free up resources, if situation occurs. Baz

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hi bigbazza re:resourse #'s

the 92 is on the boot up free system resourses is 92% free with avast and ZA free addition it starts at 87 and as soon as i surf the net or just work on the machine it drops fast to the min 60's% free resources. i have uninstalled ZA as i am running a router and need the resourses but its a 98 machine and as i was told and know to be true 98 doesn't delegate its resources very well. just though i would try to explain myself a bit better as far as the numbers go i haven't had to close programs or reboot as yet now that i removed ZA.
thank you for replying
ps . sometimes ZA would use as much as 10% of my system resources just though that was a bit much as it would drop very fast when it was running

 

rmbler, Thanks for the reply. Seems to me that whatever you do after running ZA hogs all your resources "and as soon as i surf the net or just work on the machine it drops fast to the min 60's% free resources." and " i am running a router". When you close ZA it bumps up your resources just enough to allow other stuff to run? Maybe the solution lies elsewhere? Those with wider experience than I may offer alternatives.

Can I ask again how do you get your PC to report on resources. Do you use rsrcmtr.exe or something else? I am always looking for better/different alternatives. Baz

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