Memory Leak in Win98?

[yowza]

After surfing the internet for awhile, my available memory continuously decreases to almost nothing. I do quite a bit of downloading files. Is anyone experiencing the same problem. I have 256mb memory, disk cache set to 512. I primarily use IE 5.5. I purchased a program called FreeMem that I use to constantly free up memory. This works ok but I would be interested in finding out where the memory is going.

Thanks!!
yowza

 

[toolman59]

yowza It sounds like your swapfile is not being used to support your RAM. Make sure that the swapfile settings are optimised for your system. I use Norton Utilities for this, although it can be just as easily done manually if you know the logic to work out the min and max sizes. Having checked that, make sure the HD is defragged on a regular basis and that their is plenty of spare HD space for the swapfile. I use Cacheman to tidy up the memory, this usually tells me that about 150megs of VM is being used on normal surfing, also I allocated a 2gig partition for the swapfile alone, so that it has all the elbow room it requires. Using this setup I don't have any problems downloading 30meg files other than the long time it takes.

 

[yowza]

Thanks for the info toolman59. I thought the recommended size for the swap file was 1 1/2 to twice the size of the memory. I do know that setting the min and max to the same size increases performance because the OS won't have the overhead of growing and shrinking the swap area. I don't have trouble downloading files etc. My problem is watching my memory shrink down to 10mb after being on the internet for awhile. It's like the OS or IE grabbing memory for a task and not releasing it when finished.

Yowza

 

[Crustyoldbloke]

This is clearly an internet related problem. I think that if I was in the same case scenario as yourself, I would download and run ADAWARE. Might just be that you're laden with spyware.

The other thing I'd do is download IE6.0 for greater security. I'm also wondering whether there was a way that HTML files stored on your PC, might be attempting to update themselves whilst you surf? May be a flight of fancy though. Error! Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue........??????
Phil
Please tell me if the answer I gave was helpful or a bus ride out. Without your feedback I won't know.

 

[cdogg]

yowza,
It has been my experience that no matter what you set the swapfile to or how much RAM you throw in 98's face, the same thing will occur. The reason is that the amount of available memory isn't exactly being reported to you correctly. When FreeMem tells you that it's down to just a couple MB, the truth is that 50MB or more has been cached by Windows to wait for the next calling.

So in other words, this caching by Windows tells the FreeMem that it's in use. However, that's not always the case. Win95, 98, and ME all have issues with cache and resource management. There's nothing you can really do to get around that except upgrade to an NT OS (Win2K or WinXP).

Also, you are correct that most will recommend you set the swap file to 1.5 times the amount of RAM. However, that standard mostly applied back in the day when systems had 16 or 32MB of RAM. Now that we're over 128MB, you can cut back a little. I'm willing to bet that you'll never use more than 256MB of your swapfile at any given time. I have 384MB of RAM with my swap set to 192MB.

Check this FAQ for more info:
faq615-2438


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[yowza]

Thanks Crusty and Cdog. I appreciate the response.

Crusty - I don't know what ADAWARE is but will look into it. I use WinWasher that cleans up all the temp dirs, internet files etc and a whole bunch of stuff. I have it set up to clean everything everytime I shutdown the PC. I defrag the disks at least monthly and scan for viruses weekly. Thanks for the tip!

Cdog - That faq you pointed me to was great! Particularly the one that explained how win98 allocates memory/swapfile and that having too much memory could actually decrease performance. I wonder if this applies to NT also?

 

[cdogg]

yowza,
Actually, that's the advantage of running on an NT system. The more memory you throw at it, the better! The Win9x/ME kernel is inferior in that respect, even to NT 4.0's kernel.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein