RAM utility

[Eric Legge]

Even if you have plenty of RAM it can be wasted by Windows' bad memory management.This is an award-winning RAM defragmenter and optimiser -RAM Def XTreme! v2.71 [94k] W98/2k/XP FREE - http://vstef.softnews.ro/ramdef.phpEric,http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

[khisel]

My understanding is that the memory management in Win2K and XP is actually pretty good. What kinds of memory management problems do modern Windows versions exhibit? (The web site you linked to is down as I write this.)

[zlim]

I see my RAM dropping in 2K because of programs not returning memory back. I like this program which defrags and returns RAM. I prefer version 1 to version 2. IMO, v2 has some bells and whistles that I don't need.

[jbredmound]

I would like some education, if you please. I have used Rambooster for quite some time, set to tweak very little, but I get a lot.Rambooster does not defrag RAM. What is the advantage (or disadvantage) of defragging RAM?Are there other significant differences between what I use and what you guys are recommending?I use W2K,and I noted some really clear memory mismanagement prior to using Rambooster. If I can get a better result, I will, but I am cautious.Your comments?

[Prelude76]

is QEMM still around? do they make w2k/Xp memory managers?they used to make the best EMM386 memory manager back in the day, and it was way better even though microsoft kept insisting its EMM386 version was great. I used to get 625Kb out of 640kb free memory, WITH all drivers loaded.

[GolfProRM]

WOW! Just downloaded RamDef XT (from Eric's post), and It took the 350Mb of RAM I consistently use and defragged it down to 100Mb! Even shrank my swapfile too! I'm impressed right off the bat! (This is on a machine running XP Pro)... I'll be sure to report back later after more use.I'm definitely installing this program on my ME machine at work! I had one program, but isn't near this good!

[Larkspur]

Hello.I've been lurking for some weeks here, after my good friend "zlim" introduced me to your site. I have laughed my way through all 25 pages of your hilarious "Really Bad Advice" thread!I'm not nearly computer-savy enough to qualify for membership here, but I hope you won't mind if I hang around to learn what I can.By way of introducing myself and coming up with a first post, I have a question about an app I'm trying out after reading Eric Legge's post: RAM Def XT. I quite like that I can run it in my system tray when I'm doing something that is memory-intensive, but I don't really want the three shortcut icons taking up room on my desktop. When I tried to put them into a folder I keep on the desktop for 'overflow' shortcuts, they stopped working. I've tried to create the shortcuts from scratch within the folder itself, by copying what I found in the target line in the shortcut properties window, but it didn't yield a working shortcut either. 1) "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe"2) "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -tray3) "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -silentCreating a shortcut to the same executable in three different modes is new to me. Can anyone help me out with this?Thanks,Larkspur

[ibe98765]

WOW!  Just downloaded RamDef XT (from Eric's post), and It took the 350Mb of RAM I consistently use and defragged it down to 100Mb!  Even shrank my swapfile too!  I'm impressed right off the bat!  (This is on a machine running XP Pro)...  I'll be sure to report back later after more use.I'm definitely installing this program on my ME machine at work!  I had one program, but isn't near this good!

I tried it. Not impressed. I guess if you have nothing else, then it is useful. However, I have TaskInfo which includes a Ram Defrag function as one the tools and it is always able to do more freeing than RamDef XT. On one test, RamDef gave me 135mb of free ram. I immediately ran Taskinfo and it gave me 210MB. Quite a difference. The problem with TaskInfo though is that it is not free and the defrag function is manual.

[Guest ThunderRiver]

Mm.. I do soo much stuff with Photoshop 7, and multi-task with Word, IE, AIM, OE, and other programs.. haven't felt slow down yet. so I don't need these RAM utilities. If programs refuse to quit and decide to reside in the RAM, there is nothing these RAM utilities can do about anyway.

[volunteer]

I've been using MaxMem from AnalogX on my win98 machines. I've had good luck with it and it's free. It will probably work with XP, too.

Have you ever noticed how your computer always seems to run better after rebooting? Do you wish it could be that peppy all day? Well, now it can be with a little help from AnalogX MaxMem!    AnalogX MaxMem is a realtime physical memory management program that automatically ensures that you always have as much physical memory available as possible. It does this by allowing you to set minimum amounts of memory to be made available under certain circumstance, and then passively monitoring how much system resources are being used. It runs in the system tray, and also shows you exactly how much memory you have available, plus graphs how you've been using memory over the last 60 seconds!

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/s...stem/maxmem.htmMark writes a lot of free software. His programs are always small.Ken

[Cluttermagnet]

I would like some education, if you please. I have used Rambooster for quite some time, set to tweak very little, but I get a lot.Rambooster does not defrag RAM. What is the advantage (or disadvantage) of defragging RAM?Are there other significant differences between what I use and what you guys are recommending?I use W2K,and I noted some really clear memory mismanagement prior to using Rambooster. If I can get a better result, I will, but I am cautious.Your comments?

Fred Langa has covered the use of RAM management utilities at several times over the past few years. For the most part, he was disparaging of them and he didn't believe they were worth bothering with. Yet the fact is, certain utilities can be memory hogs, and worse, they can leak memory (not free it upon being shut down or during long term use). It is certainly considered ill manners for any software to do this. Memory leaks were especially troublesome in Win9x because they can lead to crashing your OS. Any utility that could free up unused 'resources' would be of some value in Win9x computers. I'm not sure any RAM manager utilities actually do that, however.The one utility Fred likes was RAMpage. He said he found it useful when some software application has just crashed and been shut down. At that point, he likes to run RAMpage because it can defrag the contents of RAM. Other than that, he had no use for these utilities, and he was not even leaving RAMpage running, he only loaded it specifically to get it to defrag his RAM, then shut it down again.In that spirit, some of the other utilities that have been mentioned recently might be similarly useful, if they too can defrag. So far as 'freeing up' blocks of RAM, he did not feel that these utilities were doing anything really useful by doing that. His strategy was rather to make manual adjustments to the swap file size and also to take over its management and not let Windows manage it. Also he did positively describe how Cacheman could be useful occasionally to fine tune a number of windows settings such as cache memory management, etc. He pointed out that detecting utilities that leak memory and stopping using them was one of the most important measures to improve Win9x stability. This is all more of a 'big picture' subject, and as such, trying to improve things by simply working with RAM management is not seen as all that useful if done alone. There are a number of things in Windows one would need to fine tune, in order to see any real, sustainable improvements. I think these measures were most effective overall in Win9x and less so in 2K and XP environments.

[ibe98765]

Mm.. I do soo much stuff with Photoshop 7, and multi-task with Word, IE, AIM, OE, and other programs.. haven't felt slow down yet. so I don't need these RAM utilities. If programs refuse to quit and decide to reside in the RAM, there is nothing these RAM utilities can do about anyway.

All these programs do is reorganize and consolidate your RAM into a single block of free space, just like a disk defragger does (or tries to do). If you recognize the value of defragging your hard disk, then you should feel the same about this type of utility. By making all parts of a program in memory contiguous, you might see a bit better speed. By having a large block of free, contiguous RAM, your programs should load faster also. No magic here...

[Cluttermagnet]

All these programs do is reorganize and consolidate your RAM into a single block of free space, just like a disk defragger does (or tries to do).  If you recognize the value of defragging your hard disk, then you should feel the same about this type of utility.  By making all parts of a program in memory contiguous, you might see a bit better speed.  By having a large block of free, contiguous RAM, your programs should load faster also.  No magic here...

Hi, ibe- Check out this 4 part series by Langa. I would encourage you particularly to take a look at "Memory Optimizers", Part 2. The overall series starts with "Resource Leaks". It is a lot of good, detailed material. After you have read and understood all this, if you still want to make the argument that RAM defragging is as important as is defragging your HD contents regularly, I would be interested in hearing you make the case. That view puts you at odds with Fred, however. I'm open to learning new things, and I would like to know in which areas you differ with him and why. BTW it took me months to get the full benefit and understanding I pulled from that series, but I have been known to be a pretty slow study. Probably you can work through it a lot faster than me.

[ibe98765]

All these programs do is reorganize and consolidate your RAM into a single block of free space, just like a disk defragger does (or tries to do).  If you recognize the value of defragging your hard disk, then you should feel the same about this type of utility.  By making all parts of a program in memory contiguous, you might see a bit better speed.  By having a large block of free, contiguous RAM, your programs should load faster also.  No magic here...

Hi, ibe- Check out this 4 part series by Langa. I would encourage you particularly to take a look at "Memory Optimizers", Part 2. The overall series starts with "Resource Leaks". It is a lot of good, detailed material. After you have read and understood all this, if you still want to make the argument that RAM defragging is as important as is defragging your HD contents regularly, I would be interested in hearing you make the case. That view puts you at odds with Fred, however. I'm open to learning new things, and I would like to know in which areas you differ with him and why. BTW it took me months to get the full benefit and understanding I pulled from that series, but I have been known to be a pretty slow study. Probably you can work through it a lot faster than me.

I used to subscribe to Langa's newsletter but he was focused on newbies and Win98 and I didn't fit that profile. While he has some good solid basic tips, I felt that he never went as deep into a subject as I wanted. I think you may be reading more into this thread and my post that there is. In your references, Fred's talking about memory optimizers and resource leaks, areas that I was not addressing. I'm focusing on simple memory defragmentation with no claims that this will fix resource leaks nor extend small memory footprints into bigger ones.From Microsoft Windows 2000 Performance Tuning Technical Reference:Page 151-152: Memory can become fragmented. How does this affect reliability? When memory gets fragmented, applications experience problems allocating memory in large enough pieces to perform the tasks the user has requested. This, in turn, causes the operating system to swap data between memory and the pagefile (swap file) more often. Page 488 (talking about a shareware product called Totalidea WinRAM Booster: "...Unfortunately, there's a problem in all versions of Windows in the form of memory fragmentation. Like hard drive fragmentation, this problem increases the amount of time required to find all the pieces of an application. Of course, given the speed of RAM, this is hardly the performance problem of hard drive fragmentation. Memory fragmentation does present another sort of problem, however. It means your system spends more time moving data from RAM onto to the pagefile on the hard drive. Any data moved from RAM to the hard drive must be moved back at some time, which means you're paying for a two-way trip. All this movement costs a lot in the way of performance."To the best of my knowledge, Windows does not defrag RAM. If it needs to move something into RAM and there isn't enough room, then it will move stuff out to the pagefile until it gets enough room. As noted above , this can lead to performance problems such as excessive thrashing, particularly if you have a small RAM footprint and a slow hard drive.RAM defrag should help alleviate this as long as it is done on a regular basis (every x seconds).

[Cluttermagnet]

I used to subscribe to Langa's newsletter but he was focused on newbies and Win98 and I didn't fit that profile.  While he has some good solid basic tips, I felt that he never went as deep into a subject as I wanted.  I think you may be reading more into this thread and my post that there is.  In your references, Fred's talking about memory optimizers and resource leaks, areas that I was not addressing.  I'm focusing on simple memory defragmentation with no claims that this will fix resource leaks nor extend small memory footprints into bigger ones.From Microsoft Windows 2000 Performance Tuning Technical Reference:Page 151-152: Memory can become fragmented.  How does this affect reliability?  When memory gets fragmented, applications experience problems allocating memory in large enough pieces to perform the tasks the user has requested.  This, in turn, causes the operating system to swap data between memory and the pagefile (swap file) more often.  Page 488 (talking about a shareware product called Totalidea WinRAM Booster: "...Unfortunately, there's a problem in all versions of Windows in the form of memory fragmentation.  Like hard drive fragmentation, this problem increases the amount of time required to find all the pieces of an application.  Of course, given the speed of RAM, this is hardly the performance problem of hard drive fragmentation.  Memory fragmentation does present another sort of problem, however.  It means your system spends more time moving data from RAM onto to the pagefile on the hard drive.  Any data moved from RAM to the hard drive must be moved back at some time, which means you're paying for a two-way trip.  All this movement costs a lot in the way of performance."To the best of my knowledge, Windows does not defrag RAM.  If it needs to move something into RAM and there isn't enough room, then it will move stuff out to the pagefile until it gets enough room.  As noted above , this can lead to performance problems such as excessive thrashing, particularly if you have a small RAM footprint and a slow hard drive.RAM defrag should help alleviate this as long as it is done on a regular basis (every x seconds).

OK. Well, your comments about Fred come across as disparaging, "...focused on newbies and Win98..." From what you write, I can't tell whether you bothered to read those references or not. I suspect you did not. It sounds to me like you consider yourself to be Fred's peer (or better) in expertise. Since I am definitely not, I would likely end up leaving you to fight it out with Fred. I do understand his arguments sufficiently well to perceive the differences between your views. I believe you have ducked some appropriately related issues, however. I do believe that memory leaks are germane to this discussion, since we have not excluded older OS's like Win9x, and I take 'memory optimizers' and RAM utilities to be one and the same. (Some of these 'managers' also defrag, some do not) If this thread continues, we would probably end up getting into revisionism and topic creep, and the debate would shift to an ongoing disagreement as to what we are debating. I take it that you have advanced the arguments that (1.) RAM maintenance utilities are worth running full time, especially to perform defragmentation 'often', and (2.) This activity is as important and effective as regular hard drive defragging.In broad outline, Fred's measures make a great deal of sense to me, especially the part about taking away control of the swap file from Windows. Those numerous adjustments he suggested, taken together, promise to significantly reduce HD 'head thrash', especially on machines with minimal RAM. But how many folks do you know who are still running those slower machines with meager assets? Everyone now seems to have at least 128M RAM, usually 2x or 4x that amount, and many gigs of HD capacity, and are running Win98 or later and decently fast processors. I am strongly betting that he would make the argument that you ultimately will also cause significant thrash letting a RAM utility run constantly vs. letting Windows deal with everything on the fly as needed. I bet only gamers and perhaps some who are into really heavy duty graphics and music file manipulation would really benefit all that much from such hyperactive, fastidious RAM management, including defragging.You say

If you recognize the value of defragging your hard disk, then you should feel the same about this type of utility.

Well, I don't feel the same about the two activities. Here we compare apples with oranges. It is easy to understand that a lot more time gets wasted on head seek when various files have become fragmented across a hard drive- we are talking about multi-millisecond events there. Accessing files in RAM takes place in nanoseconds or less. Regardless of whether you choose to defragment 'now' or to let Windows handle fragmented files in RAM 'later', both operations are going to involve HD head seek/read/write operations of comparable duration, as I see it. I suspect that real world situations are highly dependent on the unique hardware plus software combination, as well as which particular operation is being run, and that these situations are very difficult to 'benchmark' and measure so as to compare fairly. It is probably a pretty gray area, just like the 'black' art of benchmarking competing processor architectures. As you well know, results can be unfairly skewed by careful design of the tests- so as to favor either flavor being compared. Regarding the Win2K quote, how much thrash you get probably depends on a number of factors, but likely the most important must be whether or not you use your total available RAM, and if so, how often. I have 512M here, and I don't remember the last time I ever saw much over 50 percent in use- usually it is more like 30-40 percent or less. In fact, I'm not sure I ever remember seeing my RAM maxed out and heard excessive head seek activity going on. I will pay attention the next time I burn a CDR. Believe me, I know that sound very well, as my old Win95 486-66 used to do that incessantly. Simply upgrading that old boy from 20M to the max capacity of 36M on my MB made a noticeable difference in that area. So did taking away control of the swap file from Windows and making it bigger to slightly exceed the greatest use ever recorded by sysmon, also setting up vcache and other such settings better using Cacheman one time! If you read carefully and interpret what Totalidea WinRAM Booster is saying about their product in that quote, I can interpret it as actually backing up Fred's assertion- use a RAM utility, don't use it- either way you give the heads in your HD something (slooooow) to do.

By making all parts of a program in memory contiguous, you might see a bit better speed.  By having a large block of free, contiguous RAM, your programs should load faster also.  No magic here...

That should be very true so far as fragmented files on your HD. You would still have to prove it by me, so far as programs loading faster just because of RAM defragmentation. If there is a difference, I doubt it amounts to much very often.

...if you still want to make the argument that RAM defragging is as important as is defragging your HD contents regularly, I would be interested in hearing you make the case. That view puts you at odds with Fred, however.

Still hoping to hear your explanation of why you believe this to be so.

[ibe98765]

Hey Cluttermagnet, that sure is a CLUTTERED reply! It would take me hours to go through it and make sense out of it, so I won't. I think what I previously posted was quite clear and I stand by it. If you don't understand what I wrote or quoted, then you'll need to do some more reading. For instance, you could get a copy of the book I referenced in my post at http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/3211.asp. There are probably many other similar titles available from other book sellers also.

[DannySmurf]

Hey Cluttermagnet, that sure is a CLUTTERED reply!  It would take me hours to go through it and make sense out of it, so I won't.  I think what I previously posted was quite clear and I stand by it.  If you don't understand what I wrote or quoted, then you'll need to do some more reading.  For instance, you could get a copy of the book I referenced in my post at http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/3211.asp.  There are probably many other similar titles available from other book sellers also.

Well, I DID read Cluttermagnet's entire post, and some very valid points were made.Basically, the entire RAM optimizer/defragger situation boils down to this:If you don't use one, if Windows has a problem because RAM is low or defragmented, it will swap least-used objects to the pagefile to free up system memory and realign what's left in there.If you do use one, the RAM optimizer will swap whatever it feels like (usually the largest objects) to the pagefile to free up system memory and realign what's left in there.Net benefit of using a RAM optimizer: none. The only real benefit (and it's a very small one) is that you choose when the swapping takes place, instead of Windows. And even that's not very compelling. Since the RAM optimizer generally swaps the largest objects, instead of the least-used ones, it can actually result in a net SLOWDOWN, because if you switch to (say) Photoshop or some other hungry app, all of its memory is going to have to be swapped back in before you can use it.There may be some benefit to running the optimizer every 30 seconds or so, but it's a diminishing return. The more programs you run, the more swapping IN is going to take place, and the more useless the optimizer becomes.And just to clear up a minor misconception: Some people think a RAM optimizer will free "leaked" memory. It won't. Leaked memory is gone until you reboot, because whatever program has allocated the memory has (for whatever reason) missed its chance to deallocate it. Whatever's in that block of memory cannot be freed; that's what a leak means. Whether it gets moved to the pagefile or not, if 1MB of memory is leaked, your total RAM + pagefile will be decreased by 1MB until the memory gets completely wiped.--Danny Smurf

[Larkspur]

What does a body have to do to get a qwestchun answered around here? link It seems that in the debate over the pros and cons of memory managers twixt Cluttermagnet and ibe98765, my very first post got lost in the fray. I'm still puzzling why the shortcuts for RAM Def TX do not work when I try to put them somewhere other than the desktop; which brought up the larger question for me of how to create shortcuts to the same executable in three different modes.Anyone care to respond?LarkspurP.S.: If this second attempt fails, I shall come away with the impression that the folks at Scot's Newletter Forums are too elite to welcome an eager-to-learn neophyte into their midst. Is this the impression I ought to depart with?

[Cluttermagnet]

What does a body have to do to get a qwestchun answered around here?  link It seems that in the debate over the pros and cons of memory managers twixt Cluttermagnet and ibe98765, my very first post got lost in the fray.  I'm still puzzling why the shortcuts for RAM Def TX do not work when I try to put them somewhere other than the desktop; which brought up the larger question for me of how to create shortcuts to the same executable in three different modes.Anyone care to respond?LarkspurP.S.:  If this second attempt fails, I shall come away with the impression that the folks at Scot's Newletter Forums are too elite to welcome an eager-to-learn neophyte into their midst.  Is this the impression I ought to depart with? 

Hello, Larkspur- Welcome to Scot's Forums! I hope you stick around for a while. If you do, I think you will end up delighted. I say that because this group seems to be a somewhat unusual mix of very seasoned veterans, some mid-level 'semi-experts' like myself, educated but just barely enough to be dangerous, and finally, a good sprinkling of newbies with high levels of interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm. And something else that is a bit more rare in these sorts of groups- a pretty darn good disposition and a good sense of humor! I think that you came into this thread with a good and appropriate question about a specific utility, RAM Def Tx, and also perhaps some more general questions about how one makes a valid shortcut and places it in different places and gets it to point correctly to the right utility you want opened when you click the icon. I have not yet tried your particular utility, but I might be able to answer your questions about why your shortcuts did not work in general. To this day, I sometimes find Windows confusing so far as why icon creation differs from machine to machine, but I am almost always able to quickly figure out multiple ways to accomplish what I want, because Windows has so much wonderful 'functionality' written into it. If you can tell us a bit more about your computer hardware and which OS you are using, I'm sure there are any number of folks who will help, and I'm sure one of them. I just need a bit more info from you first, so I'm sure what problems you are really dealing with. Right about when you came in with your question, ibe98765 and I got into a bit of the 'Hatfields and the McCoys' about one of the finer points of 'RAM utilities', and I found that I had to duck for cover a couple of times. I figured I would wait a couple of days to let things cool down, and besides, I figured that ibe was going to end up ducking my question anyway, and that's what happened. My heartfelt thanks to DannySmurf for suggesting that I might not be totally insane! So I'm going to let the matter drop, and anyone who wants to learn more might try reading Fred's 4-part series on fine tuning computers (especially those running Win9x). It goes into the subject of micromanaging your RAM with a software utility. Seems it's a bit of a gray area, and there are bound to be some differences of opinion. Seems like Fred thinks that those RAM management utilities are basically a wash, yet a bunch of them have been written in recent years. I have tried a couple myself. So it seems the jury is out. You know what they say- "ymmv" (your mileage might vary). For my part, I stopped using RAM utilities and instead just bought more RAM. Let us know what system you are working with, Larkspur. We will try to help.

[Cluttermagnet]

What does a body have to do to get a qwestchun answered around here?  link It seems that in the debate over the pros and cons of memory managers twixt Cluttermagnet and ibe98765, my very first post got lost in the fray.  I'm still puzzling why the shortcuts for RAM Def TX do not work when I try to put them somewhere other than the desktop; which brought up the larger question for me of how to create shortcuts to the same executable in three different modes.Anyone care to respond?LarkspurP.S.:  If this second attempt fails, I shall come away with the impression that the folks at Scot's Newletter Forums are too elite to welcome an eager-to-learn neophyte into their midst.  Is this the impression I ought to depart with? 

My 'off the cuff' reaction is that you appear to be trying to run a command line in 2 out of 3 cases:1) "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe"2) "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -tray3) "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -silent(cases 2 and 3)I am thinking that, depending very much on which OS you are running, you could handle this with a little DOS trickery. Something like writing a couple of little .bat files for those two items, and then (if I remember right), a couple of .pif files to point to those .bat files and execute them. Then you could drag icons for the .pif files to wherever you need them and then right-click on them and 'change their properties' over from a generic DOS icon to a copy of the Utility's icon (the main icon for the .exe for RAM Def Tx). Of course then you have the problem that all 3 icons are identical. I know, it all sounds insane, doesn't it? Somebody help me out here! (and Larkspur: what OS are you running? Makes a _big_ difference!)

[Larkspur]

Hello Cluttermagnet,Thank you for your cordial welcome! I felt sure that my unanswered post was not a deliberate snub, but if I hadn't asked, I would have been very hesitant to join in another thread.To answer your question, I'm running Windows 98 with a 266Mhz Pentium II Processor, on a box with 64 MB RAM, 5 GB hard drive.The reason I downloaded RAM Def TX was because the defragger I am currently using, AMS Fast Defrag, seems to cause rather a lot of what I think you call thrash. This may be perfectly normal, but I wanted to see if I observed the same with a different defragger. While RAM Def TX appears to run more 'quietly,' that is the only positive thing I can say about it thus far. The last two times I've run it, it a) crashed my system, and b ) seemed to go into a loop where it kept defragging over and over and wouldn't stop on its own. (I'd already uninstalled/reinstalled the thing the first time I noticed the shortcuts not working, so I don't think it could be a bad install that is causing the problem.)So perhaps my question about the shortcuts is academic at this point, but I still wanted to know how to create those shortcuts successfully in case I ever need to do so with another app. I've never had an application refuse to open when I moved its shortcuts into my "overflow" folder, so I haven't a clue why I cannot do so with these three, unless it has to do with the fact that each shortcut opens the application into a different mode and moving the shortcut somehow screws up the command line.I want to thank you, Cluttermagnet, for the helpful links you provided. I've read the first two installments by Fred Langa on Resource Leaks and just tonight went back to get a copy of Part Three and Part Four. I even went into my Windows CD and installed the Resource Meter he mentions. Always ready to learn something new, Larkspur

[Cluttermagnet]

Hello Cluttermagnet,Thank you for your cordial welcome!  I felt sure that my unanswered post was not a deliberate snub, but if I hadn't asked, I would have been very hesitant to join in another thread.To answer your question, I'm running Windows 98 with a 266Mhz Pentium II Processor, on a box with 64 MB RAM, 5 GB hard drive.The reason I downloaded RAM Def TX was because the defragger I am currently using, AMS Fast Defrag, seems to cause rather a lot of what I think you call thrash.  This may be perfectly normal, but I wanted to see if I observed the same with a different defragger.  While RAM Def TX appears to run more 'quietly,' that is the only positive thing I can say about it thus far.  The last two times I've run it, it a) crashed my system, and b ) seemed to go into a loop where it kept defragging over and over and wouldn't stop on its own.  (I'd already uninstalled/reinstalled the thing the first time I noticed the shortcuts not working, so I don't think it could be a bad install that is causing the problem.)So perhaps my question about the shortcuts is academic at this point, but I still wanted to know how to create those shortcuts successfully in case I ever need to do so with another app.  I've never had an application refuse to open when I moved its shortcuts into my "overflow" folder, so I haven't a clue why I cannot do so with these three, unless it has to do with the fact that each shortcut opens the application into a different mode and moving the shortcut somehow screws up the command line.I want to thank you, Cluttermagnet, for the helpful links you provided.  I've read the first two installments by Fred Langa on Resource Leaks and just tonight went back to get a copy of Part Three and Part Four.  I even went into my Windows CD and installed the Resource Meter he mentions.  Always ready to learn something new, Larkspur

Hey, great, Larkspur!Now we are getting somewhere. It sounds like your system qualifies as a 'low RAM' situation. I can well understand your motivation trying RAM managers! My 333MHz P2 machine also started out in life as a 64M machine. PC-100 was still very pricey just a few years ago. I eventually started adding RAM, at fairly high expense, but wow, was it ever worth it! Almost instantly I had pretty much a new machine. By a series of coincidences, my very first RAM upgrade did not work out, but the vendor offered a replacement that happened to be a big upgrade. By buying used 'pulls' at a computer show, I ended up going instantly from 64M to 256M. Wow! Who just turned on the lights? Suddenly my computer really worked fast, for the first time. Websites loaded in my browser way faster, etc. (and we're talking dialup connection here).My top suggestion for you would be to check your mother board to see if it has an empty socket or two for more RAM sticks. If so, it has gotten so dirt cheap to buy new RAM that you can double your present RAM virtually for free (a friend might loan or give you a 64M that they no longer have room for, having moved up to 128M or higher sticks), and a 128M stick should nearly always be found on sale in the bigger discount stores for about 20 dollars or less. You do need to find out what the size limit is on your MB, but it is probably 128M or even 256M per stick. My P2 will take up to 3 each of the 256M size (but there are good reasons to keep Win 98 at 512M or less to avoid some problems). I can tell you that just doubling to 128M will show you a quite noticeable speed improvement. 128M to 256M a bit less noticeable. Beyond that, not really noticeable any more but sometimes still very worthwhile depending on what software apps you run.Another suggestion would be to get and run Cacheman, and you can use it to make a one-time (easily reversible) change to how your computer uses cache memory and a few other important parameters. It is probably good to stick with the free version (this software eventually went shareware). If you try it and like it, you can always spring for the latest version later. I think I still know where to download the last freeware version. If you need help finding it, let me know and I will go find the link again.The shortcuts issue is a tricky one and often drives me crazy when I am doing that sort of thing on friends' computers, but it is quick and easy to figure out how to make them once you have learned the several different ways it can be done. It all depends on where you want to create them, too- on a desktop, in your 'quickstart' menu (down in the tray), in your start menu, in an 'icon holder', of which there are many types, some even freeware. And yes, even in a folder visible on your desktop. I have found that a lot of programs like your RAM Def Tx make several different-looking desktop icons sometimes. If you right click up their Properties and read them, you see the only difference is that little command line addon like "-tray" or "-silent". Usually you can learn from the Properties of the icon where it actually lives on your hard drive. Then you navigate there using Windows Explorer and create a shortcut to that item (even if it itself is a shortcut) that your desktop icon is pointing to. Then you can drag this newly-made shortcut to various other places and play with the icon and change it too, if you want to. If you want to try to do that and have reinstalled the utility, you could get in touch with me by email and we could set up a chat link and I could talk you through the task. Once you learn these little tricks, you will use them over and over to really customize Windows the way you like it, and that is one of the joys of digging in and learning about your OS and software.

[jiz]

The reason for the shortcuts not working is that RAM Def does not support multiple instances. That is, if it finds it is already running it won;t open yet another window. So check the tray area to see if you already have it loaded. The first prize for creating .bat files and shortcuts goes to clutteredmagnet, who doesen't know that using a batch file implies that the startup dir for the app you're trying to run is the dir where the batch is located - and NOT the app's default dir. This may cause problems with some apps. Also, one piece of advice for Larkspur, always, when in doubt RTFM !!! (This applies to RD XT as well)

[jiz]

Oh, almost forgot: thumbs up for ibe98765 !

[Larkspur]

Cluttermagnet,It's actually been my plan for the past couple of months to purchase a new drive plus some additional RAM. I've just been a bit laggard about getting 'round to it as it poses some complicated issues I shall have to sort out beforehand, such as which drive to make the master and which the slave, whether or not to partition the new drive ( I've read that one loses speed when data is spread over a much larger drive), and so on.It's no problem for me to create a new shortcut when it points to a straight-forward executable. Normally I would simply browse to the executable in the Create Shortcut window, but that doesn't work in this instance since I end up with just the .exe and no mode. I thought copying what I saw in the target line in the shortcut Properties window (which I copied in my first post) would do the trick... But apparently not, since the new shortcuts did not work. So what I would like to know is what am I missing here? How do I modify the new shortcut so that it opens the .exe into the desired mode?Your assistance is much appreciated,LarkspurP.S.: This to jiz: I did read the Help manual prior to posting, and no, I did not have an instance of the program already running when I tried out the new shortcuts. That stupid I'm not.

[Guest LilBambi]

OK, play nice ... It was starting to get so loud in here, I could hear it down the hall! LOL! (stole that line from Scot in another thread ).Remember that words can often be taken much more strongly than intended because we can not see each other's faces to see was meant in jest and what was not.Please keep the conversation on the topic and not aimed at our fellow members.Thanks!

[GolfProRM]

Hmm... I noticed with the -tray extension, it does pop the window up on the screen and after a second or so, pops to the tray... the silent one pops up and runs a defrag, then exits... As for why they're not working, I don't know...If you right click on the shortcut, and go to properties, in the shortcut tab, it should say:"C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -silentor "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -trayCheck that and also check that the "Start in:" line says "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT"Make sure you leave all quotes as is. :)What I would do is move the main shortcut, then copy and paste it again, add the silent line to the new one and rename it... do the same for the third.

[Cluttermagnet]

The reason for the shortcuts not working is that RAM Def does not support multiple instances. That is, if it finds it is already running it won;t open yet another window. So check the tray area to see if you already have it loaded.

Thanks, jiz-This is one of the best suggestions I have heard so far.Larkspur-Does this apply to your situation? It might be possible that you actually did make valid shortcuts, but that the utility is simply, for obvious reasons, forbidden by the software author from opening multiple instances of itself. Imagine if you had 3 different copies all active at the same time and they all decided to move some RAM around at the same time! I will make a few more suggestions later. I'm still in the 'busy' part of my day.

[Larkspur]

P.S.:  This to jiz:  I did read the Help manual prior to posting, and no, I did not have an instance of the program already running when I tried out the new shortcuts.  That stupid I'm not. 

I stuck it in a postscript, but yes, I did check again to make sure that I did not have any other instances of the program running.

If you right click on the shortcut, and go to properties, in the shortcut tab, it should say:"C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -silentor "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT\RAMDef.exe" -trayCheck that and also check that the "Start in:" line says "C:\Program Files\RAM Def XT"

If you read my first post you will see that I copied exactly what I found the the Properties window target line. When I look at the Properties window for the shortcuts that the program created and the ones I created myself, they are absolutely identical, so I cannot figure out what the problem may be.It's not really all that important that I get these shortcuts working. I simply was curious as to what I might have missed.Larkspur

[GolfProRM]

Hmm... sorry Larkspur... You're not really missing all that much though... as I mentioned earlier, the Tray extension just makes it start in the tray, and the silent extension runs the defrag and then exits. Not a huge deal.