System Resources (W98)

[Tltroops]

Anyone know how to free up System Resources in WIN9X? I have cleared out the start up menu, but as soon as I get on the internet my resources go from 73% to 65% and below, as low as 40% within a matter of minutes. Is this normal? My downloads from Kazaa are very slow too.

Thanks.

[dmorse03]

Resources have to get a lot below 40% before you are in trouble. However, you can download WINTOP which will tell you exactly how your resources are being used:
System Resources have absolutely nothing to do with physical memory. You can learn about 'System Resources' here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wutoys/w95kerneltoy/ (http://www.infinisource.com/techfiles/win-resources.html>http://www.infinisource.com/techfiles/win-resources.html</a>
There)

You may or may not have any use for the rest of the programs in the 'Kernel Toy' package.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________


After you download it, here is a site which explains in detail what 'Wintop' does:
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.evolution-at-home.net/Tools/wintop.txt>http://www.evolution-at-home.net/Tools/wintop.txt</a>

[patyson]

The first thing you should do,is get rid of Kazaa.It's complete crap,full of spyware,and will only cause you problems.Get Kazaa-lite,if you must.

[svoutsinas]

This is a good site on help with System Resources&gt;
http://www.forrestandassociates.co.uk/pcforrest/resources.html
Good Luck, Flight.

[TonyKlein]

It's most probably due to Internet related spyware (New.Net, SaveNow, etcetera) bundled with Kazaa.

This means, that uninstalling Kazaa won't suffice; you need to get rid of the spyware as well.

Do this:

Download <a target="_blank" href=http://patrick.kolla.de/spybotsd.html>Spybot - Search & Destroy</a>

It looks for spyware, but also targets dialers and other nasties, and it's freeware.

After installing, go to the Online tab, and search for and install all updates.

NOTE: Don't install the 1.0 program update, as that's the one you have already.

Next, go to the Settings tab > File Sets, and uncheck 'System Internals' and 'Tracks' .

These aren't needed for our present purpose.

Finally, hit 'Check All', and have SpyBot remove all it finds.

There's another excellent application, called Ad-Aware which does a similar job, but for now let's do SpyBot.
It targets New.Net as well, which I'm guessing you have, and which Ad-Aware doesn't target.

Good luck, Tony

[bdragon]

A little background (for those who don't know).

The "resources" that Windows lists are two 64K blocks of conventional memory. One for USER.EXE, and one for GDI.EXE. Thier size cannot be changed.

Since they reside in conventional memory, the more programs you run (remember, progs always run in conventional memory), the fewer resources you have.

I did a study on this for a client, recently.
A Win98 box w/64MB or RAM, running Novell Client 3.30 and McAfee AntiVirus can be optimized to have 92% resources free upon login.

However, running email (GroupWise), Word, and one IE session brings resources down to 70%. Additional browser sessions drop resources even further.

Performance begins to degrade around 35-40%.
Resource alerts start showing up at 5%.
Close Program alerts show up at 2%,
and the system all but stops at 0%.

Remember this rule: Less is more.
The fewer programs that are running, the faster the system goes. Helper programs like Kazaa are good for people who don't know their way around the net, but if you have performance requirements, go old school. 1 or 2 browser sessions, good FTP & Telnet clients, and a basic setup.