BleepingComputer.com: How Useful Or Dangerous Is Freeram Spro?

Even when I got 1G RAM, together with my modest Pentium III/700 on XP Pro; perfect and regular cleaning and defrag, I still get relatively slow performance. Is it adviceable the above named applications? Thanks and greetings

I'd say it's the Pentium III/700 that's slowing you down, not the 1GB of ram, so a utility that claims to free up extra ram wouldn't actually do a lot for you.

I agree with Korpse. Utilities to "free up" RAM are basically pointless. RAM that is "free" when your system is operating at its usual memory load is not doing anything for you (read "wasted"). The code and data that your system uses to run your software can be in two places: on a drive or in RAM. RAM is fast, drive is slow, so Windows actually tries hard to keep as much as possible in RAM where it works much faster. Using a Freeram type of utility to force stuff out of memory ensures that more things are paged out to the hard drive and have to be reloaded into memory when they are needed, rather than already being there.

Considering the system's modest specification, what are you using for comparison when you say "relatively slow" performance?

Many thanks, dear friends. I was wondering almost the same. When I say relatively slow, I mean that it takes some "extra" seconds to start, to move from windows to windows, filling of control panel, etc., in a manner that is not very different (maybe worst) to the times when I had just 256 RAM. Also the starting itself is fragmentary (since the appearing of the desk) with a starting task bar with square holes, slow icons configuring appearence and total shape, etc. I recognize that I have almost a dinosaur (straighlty cannot spend money and tremendous work buying a new PC), but I could say that something got wrong that made my PC slower than "necessary" (slower than it was until a few months ago). I have scanned, cleaned, added an external hard disk (for relief the free space), but there has been no improvement. In any case the situation is not severe and I can live with it; but I was expecting more from the RAM increasing four times the cipher. The only parallel change in my movements that I have done ultimately is not to delete the Register findings by CCleaner as adviced by one of you who's very wise. Many thanks and friendly regards.

When my system starts up, and before I run anything, XP is using under 300Mb of ram - that's with anti-virus, firewall, Daemon, and VNC loaded at start-up. What is your RAM usage at idle once the system has started up?

Hi! Between 8% and 25% (sometimes 100% for a fraction of a second), 200Mb. I think it's acceptable. Isn't it? Greetings

merellogalasso, on Aug 6 2008, 11:35 AM, said:

Those figures for RAM usage seem OK to me.

100% for a fraction of a second is not referring to CPU usage is it?

Yeah, it is. Is it bad? Sorry for my ignorance. Greeetings

CPU usage occasionally flicking to 100% is not unusual. If it seems to do it for no reason when you are doing nothing at all with the computer, it could be good for peace of mind to do a Malware scan with something like SuperAntiSpyware if you haven't already done so. However there are background tasks that can cause the occasional 100% without there being any problem.

You are very kind. I am very much faithfull to CCleaner without deleting register findings. Also, I have used Malwarebyte's Malaware (just the surface cleaning...) and Adaware, almost weekly. But, really, considering the "dinosauric" conditons of my PC, I am quite happy with the very current situation. Many thanks and friendly regards.

Hi! I runned CCleaner, ADaware, Malwarebyte's, defragged, etc., and I still have this almost new way of starting that happens to be that after the blue screen with the "welcome", it opens just the landscape I have in the desk; after, at least, five or ten seconds, it opens the task bar with a square hole at the left where some icons are suposed to appear; no icons on the desk until now; after that, task bar icons appear; then, the other ones on the desk, slowly configuring, etc. Until about two months ago, in no relations with anything important, the desk stopped to appear as a strike, complete. I do not know what modified practically the "order" of commands; or either, if the total time is equal, but it seems to me clearly that now it's a lot slower. Once the PC is functioning, I think that's very acceptable; just acceptable... Many thanks and friendly regards

Platypus, on Aug 7 2008, 01:04 AM, said:

Assuming your XP is at least Service Pack 2 (as it should be for security and ability to update), try this: change your colour depth (eg 32 bit to 16 bit, apply, then back to 32 bit, apply) and see if that makes any difference.

If you're uncertain of the procedure, right click on desktop to get display Properties, in Settings change Color Quality to an alternative, then back again.

This may or may not help, but it causes Windows to rebuild the Shell Icon Cache, and can correct slow icon loading and corruption.

I did already that, a while ago, for reading Salzburger Festspiele page and it wasa disaster preciesly in the way yoy say. Many thanks and greetings

Platypus, on Aug 8 2008, 09:55 PM, said:

Do you mean the slow icon drawing began when you previously changed colour depth setting? Then I suggest doing that change sequence again (it must be colour depth, not just screen resolution). I had to do it myself on my laptop a few days ago, as it began drawing desktop icons slowly.

What happens is Windows puts all the desktop icons in a file called ShellIconCache. If this file is damaged, either at creation or subsequently during defrag or whatever, each time Windows builds the desktop it has to look in the .exe file referenced by each shortcut to get its icon. This causes the delayed drawing and lags in building the desktop. A different icon is used for different display colour depths, so when you change this setting, Windows creates a new ShellIconCache file.

It's something always worth trying if you get slow icon display on the desktop.

No, it was just a short while ago not clearly related with anything in special, from one day to the next. And the change of depth was a lot ago. I had so bad moments when I changed the depth that I doubt a little to repeat the Via Crucis. I believe you, then probably I will try tomorrow, for today, I have been hard working in my new web page and my "bones" are a little old already. Many, many thanks and greetings