To Cache or not to Cache revisited

[Eaglefeather]

I have been using reboots suggestions in his article, Cache or not to Cache since he first published it. It has worked fine on my old Packer Hell and in my wifes clone. However it doesn't seem to be working in my new PC.

This PC uses an AMD Duron 1 gig chip with 128 megs of RAM and runs win98se.

I have everything turned off except ZoneAlarm, Panda Antivirus and systray and of course IE 6. At this moment I am down to 57% of System Resources free. With just ZA, my AV and systray running the system has 70% of resources free.

My modem keeps shutting down if I try to upload files or if I visit too many sites during a session.

When I am off line I have not had any resourse conflicts at all. I am big into graphics and am able to have both of my Paintshop Pro versions open at the same time, plus IView and sometimes one or two of my other graphics programs.

This resource problem only occurs when I go online.

Any suggestions?

Oh and don't forget guys I am not a tech, I get lost in the jargon pretty quick although I do know my way around the system if given clear instructions.

Any suggestions on what may be using all of these resources Besides IE?

More importantly would appreciate any help you can give to help me regain those resources.

[reboot]

One word; winmodem.
Grab another 256 meg of RAM for the machine, and consider a hard modem or broadband.
Winmodems suck resources, and keep sucking the longer you're online, until there are none left and it can't use the swap file, because it's not fast enough.

[galaxian]

Exactly what is the problem you are having?

Low resources is not an issue, unless you are getting Out of memory or Low on Resources messages.
Resources, like ram, are there to be used and having a higher percentage does not increase performance.

[reboot]

Low resources are ALWAYS an issue in Win9x, especially with a winmodem hogging more and more the longer you're online, and not releasing them, especially in a RAM challenged system
Windows will not always tell you you're out of resources, especially if you have a large swap file. "Resources" includes the swap file as well as RAM, so even if RAM is full, the computer slows to a crawl, modems hang for no reason, lots of things can happen, all because of increased read/write to the swap.
Having more RAM allows you to spend a lot more time doing things before restarting the computer, or otherwise releasing junk from RAM to continue.

[edge345]

For all the multitasking you are doing Rebbot is correct to add more ram. also about the win-modem.

[galaxian]

Sorry, but the thing called "System Resources" has nothing to do with the swap file and vice-versa. Nada!

And, adding Ram will have no affect on the availability of System Resources.

http://www.aumha.org/a/resource.htm

"Low Resources" are not an issue on Win9x unless you are running an exhorbitant amount of tasks at once.
"Limited" resources is definitely an issue, because they are exactly that. Limited and Finite.

[Eaglefeather]

Sorry reboot but I am not familiar with either of the modem types you mentioned. I just had this PC built a few months ago. It has an Intel V92 HaM data fax modem installed, is that a winmodem??

If this one is no good could you give me a suggestion as to what brand/type/model I should be looking for? I am on a very slow phone connection with a possibility of DSL sometime in the future. I am also on a bit of a tight budget so of course do not want or need the absolute best on the market, just something reliable.

The extra RAM is not a problem but I don't want to be purchasing it only to find that I still only have the 57% of resources free that I had last night.

What I find strange is that with my Packard Hell, a 233 with only 64k of RAM was also running ZoneAlarm and Panda along with IE 5.5. Most of the time my resourses when on line were down around 67 - 68%, but my moden never shut down. IE would just crash every once in a blue moon.


Galaxiam, this new machine with more RAM running the same things as the Packard Hell is using much more resourses and the modem is constantly shutting down, particularly when uploading files, both image and text. Even had it shut down a few times while doing mail.

It is very annoying and as my PC takes quite a while to reboot it is also costing me prescious online time. I do not have carte blanche time on the internet. So whether it is a resource problem or a modem problem is quite immaterial to me, I just want to get this machine to stay online during my online times.

Thanks to all for the suggestions and I would appreciate any suggestions as to the type of modem I should be looking for.

[reboot]

galaxian, you go ahead and quote any number of websites, defining "resources", and how they have nothing to do with swap file, RAM, or whatever. I don't care what you call it, when RAM is full, swap file is used, and swap is too slow for winmodems to use; system resources become limited.
Eagle, yes, that's a winmodem, and one of the poorest, originally a Cyrix chip, then bought by Ambient, now owned by Intel.
Your PB had a hard modem, thus it didn't use ANY Windows resources, and would stay on line for days at a time if needed.
Any hard modem. If you have an ISA slot open, consider anything with a Rockwell ACFII chipset (that's pronounced A.C.F. 2). You should be able to find one for less than $20
If not, dig up any external serial, not USB.
In any case, having more RAM is a great idea for your system, adding a hard modem is the next logical purchase. The two combined should give you much more stability and a bit more speed.

[galaxian]

Jim:
I really don't want to argue, but ....

Eaglefeather in his first post indicated his "System Resources" were at 57%.

This number (and terminology) has nothing to do with ram, nothing to do with swap, nothing to do with cpu, nothing to do with disk, etc, etc.

They are the finite areas in the Windows 9x architecture as explained on Jim Eshelman's site above.

The "general" term system resources DOES include all of the components above, but the Windows specific term, does not. And throwing more ram, disk, cpu, etc will not resolve a "System Resource" problem.

But I would agree with your prognosis on dumping the WinModem.

[Eaglefeather]

Thanks guys, will look into the modem right away. Would I pull out the Itel modem before the new installation or just leave it in?

In the meantime this discussion is taking on the aspects of an excellent learning experience.

[reboot]

Pull the old, but just before you do that, uninstall it...that is, remove it from device mangler, or run it's uninstaller if it has one...then shutdown, take the modem out, restart, shutdown, put the new in, restart.

[Eaglefeather]

Thanks Jim. Btw any suggestions for a new one, make or model?

galaxian - I went to the link you gave and read all about resources, wow, what an eye opener. It was a fantastic read, have the site bookmarked and will go back for more eye openers. Thanks.