XP and Use of System Resources

[hodunwun]

When I was using w 98 I was always concerned about resources and tried to keep the system tray on the bottom to mininmal programs to conserve resources. Does xp use conserve resouces better? Should I be concerned about programs open. With 98. i was told that the only programs open were in the task tray to the right at bottom. I was told that 'quick launch' and desktop items were not loaded yet like the tray items. Is this the same with xp? Maybe someone can send me somewhere on the web that tells about this. I am running a p4 2.2 with 512 of rambus. thanks,
doug

[bailey]

windows 98 ect. all had a limit of 512 of ram that it could use.
w2000, and xp has no limit, they will use all the ram you can put in, only limited by how much the motherboard can handle,
so the best thing you can do for xp is to put in all the ram you can, and not worry about any limits and resources,

hope this answeres your question.

[Tuf]

The NT based OS's (NT,2000,XP) multi task much better than the 9X OS's. Under 9X everything basically runs at the same priority level so nothing truly runs in the background. If it's running it's taking up resources that will not be available to take on new tasks. It kind of an over simplification but NT can put tasks on the back burner and run the task at hand at a higher priority level. Thats why with NT, 2000 or XP you can open twenty or more programs and not have a dramatic effect on system performance.

[Doobie]

bailey, correct me if im wrong but doesnt XP home and XP pro have a limit of 4GB of RAM?

[DilLy]

I heard that too. But people said ME/98 had a limit of 512mb, but there was a simple workaround to that in the registry. Or you could get Cachman and it will handle fix for you.

So I assume, that there is someway to do similar in XP, but very few people out there are trying to use 4 gig's of memory, so it isn't really an issue at this time.

[Doobie]

Heck, I would be happy with 512 in ram..... One day....

[bailey]

yes the max is 4 gig for xp, but I guess I was useing that to point out the adverage user would not have any limit, who would even want that much,

[gladiator]

Hey Hodunwun

If you want to see whats running hit "ctrl-alt-del" and for xp hit the resources tab.
I learned that a long time ago when my defrag kept restarting,
the tool bar will not show you everything thats running.

[hodunwun]

Thankyou everyone. I think you covered this one for sure. XP has been running great for me even with the SP1 windows update installed. Took hours though at 28.8. I must live right I guess. Now I just wish dsl or cable were out her in the country.
doug [hodunwun]

[Goodman770]

One quick note about XP, 98 and RAM that I thought you may have been asking. If you boot up a machine in 98, and leave it idol for 48 hours...it will have used up almost all the RAM and a reboot would likely be in order to increase performance again. XP however, does not. If you put "RAM booster", the program, on there...it shows you how horribly 9x used RAM resources and how far XP has come.

[glc]

"Resources" in 9x have nothing to do with RAM - they are operating system "heaps". A NT-based OS doesn't use heaps - it uses physical ram and virtual memory (pagefile) instead. That's why the big difference.

[mike breck]

hodunwun,

Have a look at this site. It will tell you what doesn't need to run all the time in XP.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/service411.htm

HTH

[hodunwun]

Thanks Mike. I have looked at Black Viper and have it book marked. I will slowly disable some stuff since I am not on a LAN.
doug