Managing available ram after boot up

[beatgorilla]

I don't know how much ram XP Pro uses, but out of 256megs I only have 32 available. How can I end unnecessary processes or processes that wont affect my pc usage? I do plan on upgrading my memory, but thats not for a few weeks and I use my pc a lot!!! The boot time is becoming horrendous!! I recently downloaded Netscape 7.2 because I have a few problems with IE, but other than that, I don't have any extra programs executing at start up. I have Norton Anti-Virus and it says I'm good (I have it disabled at start up as well) on my last scan, but man is my start up slow. Also, about once an hour or so, my computer will just take forever to complete a task that was flowing like clockwork just moments before. Sometimes its takes so long that I have to reboot. Is it possible that I'm infected even though Norton says I'm not? I'm not sure what the problem is, but other than a slo-o-ow boot and consistent system (or program) hands, I'm fine. BTW, I'm running FIC AU-13 w/XP 2600, SP2.

[rjfvillarosa]

I would say that half your problem could be Norton but you say you have it disabled on startup, try running an online scan at http://housecall.trendmicro.com and you could also try running a few spyware scans, try starting with adaware from www.lavasoft.com.
You may also want to consider running your scans in safemode (with networking to give you internet access), have a read here for the why's and why not's of running in safemode http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=115633

[bailey]

I would recommend bringing your ram up to 512m as xp does a good job mannageing it and does use as much as it can, but also will alloicate what is needed for operations, and it does do a much better job when you have plenty of ram.
256 is the least you want to have, but 512 is much better for xp.

[glc]

SP2 is harder on ram too - you may want to revert to SP1 till you can upgrade the ram. Trim back your startup items to a bare minimum. Netscape isn't exactly a lean application either - IE is actually easiest on resources because it's integrated with the OS, but if you are having problems with IE, they may very well be related to your sluggishness!

[beatgorilla]

An upgrade to 1 gig is going to happen in a couple (2,3) weeks from now. Maybe it isn't entirely a ram problem because everything was relatively fine a couple of weeks ago. I ran Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and only found cookies, ran Norton and found nothing. The reason I'm using Netscape now is because, at the moment, it loads almost instantly and navigates very, very fast. IE, for some reason, takes for ever to load the home page (www.msn.com) and I'm noticing a few more pop-ups. Before, I had virtually no pop-ups at all. Its not a lot of pop-ups, but more than what I was getting. Thats not even the main concern, though. I just can't figure out why it hangs at various times while trying to load a page or why some of my programs take an awfully long time to load. Usually, the cpu is at 100% when its going through this, too. Other than netscape I haven't installed anything recently and I experienced the problems before downloading that browser as well.

[rjfvillarosa]

As of late I am not over impressed with Norton's abilities, try running an online scan at http://housecall.trendmicro.com and try downloading AVG7 antivirus free from www.grisoft.com

[beatgorilla]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa As of late I am not over impressed with Norton's abilities, try running an online scan at http://housecall.trendmicro.com and try downloading AVG7 antivirus free from www.grisoft.com

I'm at work at the moment, but that'll be the first thing I do when I go home today.

[beatgorilla]

Well I tried the linked, but all I get is an error code 28 (bad traffic or busy server). I've tried a couple of times, but got the same result. I thought maybe it was a firewall issue, but it didn't help after I turned it off. Maybe I'll try again later.

[rjfvillarosa]

I just tried both links and they are working fine 6.04pm EST