What does low on resources mean?

[DragonNOA1]

Every once in a great while i get a message that my computer is low on resources. I am just wondering what that means b/c i have plenty of RAM. i'm thinking it's an overflow in some program but i dont really know what a computer's resources are so if anyone knows could you please enlighten me. thanks

[Force Flow]

A complete shut down takes care of it.

You are correct in thinking that. It is sometimes sloppy coding that does not allow pagefile space free.

[DragonNOA1]

Found this at TECHTV, hopefully it'll help others as it helped me.

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It's not unusual to get low on system resources after you use Windows for a long stretch, especially if you open and close programs frequently.


Adding a bunch of RAM doesn't help. System resources are stored in fixed memory blocks that reside in your System RAM. These blocks don't change in size whether your PC has 512MB of RAM or 32MB of RAM.


Programs store certain routines inside your system resources. Bad programs don't reallocate or release the memory, so after a while your machine gets full. You have to restart Windows to free up memory again.


That's why Windows feels more reliable if you restart it after every six to eight hours of use. If your system resources get low more often than that, restart more often, like after lunch and after work.


The System Resource Monitor under Start Menu/Programs/Accessories/System Tools tells you how your system resources are allocated.


If you crash a lot, it might be worth running the system monitor in the background. Just remember that it also uses memory resources.


According to Microsoft, Windows 3.1 has a a 64-kilobyte (K) system-resource limit. For backwards compatibility, Windows 95 and higher move several other resources into a shared 32-bit virtual flat-address space of the system