Typical memory usage 1

[Glasgow]

I have a Windows 2000 box that I use at home. It has 18Mb RAM. What would be the typical memory usage of a Windows 2000 Professional box after boot after, say, a fresh install of the operating system?

Mine is chewing up 130Mb or more and running slow but, to be honest, I'm not sure if it is using more memory than it did when Windows 2000 was first installed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[bcastner]

64MB is the official minimum amount of RAM.
128MB is my own version of the minmum.

 

[Glasgow]

Thanks - I had come across the 64k limit on MS website but, I guess, just because they suggest that as minimum physical memory, it doesn't mean that it doesn't actually need a lot more in practice (in line with your own minimum) and just swap out to disk as required.

What I'm interested in is what one might expect Task Manager to report as memory in use after a boot with minimal bells and whistles installed and no applications running.

 

[bcastner]

I do not think there is a straight answer, as the memory management modules will adjust what Task Manager shows depending on installed RAM.

You can, I know, run with only 32MB of RAM, it that is suggestive.

 

[Glasgow]

Thanks again. I guess the issue revolves around physical memory versus 'total' memory (not quite sure what word to use here - but presumably, if my machine is reporting 130Mb it is using disk for some of this, which potentially slows things down).

My gut says that, if 64Mb (sorry about 64k in previous post) is recommended minimum and I have 128Mb, no applications running and minimal startup tasks, I would expect to be using significantly less than my maximum physical memory but I'm not.

I'd also like to be able to add up memory being used by individual processes and come to a total that comes close to the total suggested as used in Task Manager but I can't.

 

[bcastner]

File system caching likely explains the disparity. Roughly of the RAM portion used your process usage will equal roughly 2/3rds, and the remaining 1/3rd is taken as a memory cache for the file system.

 

[Glasgow]

OK - thanks for that. I have asked for screenshots from a couple of customer Win2k machines when in a relatively quite state. One shows memory usage as 122380k / 631232k and the other has yet to report.

So perhaps my own box is not so far off the norm?

 

[Castor66]

Did I read this thread right? IS he actually running Win2K in 18MB of Ram? I didn't think that was possible. The lowest I've ever seen was 64MB and that ran like a dog with 2 legs. My recommendation is 128MB but generally as much as you can. I run 512MB on my laptop and 1GB on my desktop.

I did accidentally start a Win2K3 server with only 3MB of Ram (it was a virtual machine) and it took nearly an hour to boot and shut it down again. Not fun!!!

 

[Glasgow]

Sorry - you have pointed out a typo in the original post - I have 128Mb which can't have helped my general intention for this thread much!

I have 128Mb but mem usage showing as 176164k/310208k in task manager with only two copies of Internet Explorer running plus background tasks. It all just seems a bit much and I'm wondering if I've got a leak somewhere or background tasks that should not be there.

 

[bcastner]

Seems fine to me.

 

[Glasgow]

OK thanks for your persistence - maybe it's just time to buy some more RAM.

 

[Glasgow]

Just for the record, the other customer machine shows 129328k / 309900k which suggests that 128Mb is around "normal" usage after boot.

 

[Glasgow]

Pursuing my earlier typo suggesting that I was looking to run with minimal memory, I happened to come across the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../professional/reskit/en-us/part6/proch28.mspx

which actually suggests:

Start your monitoring efforts by knowing that you have at least the minimum amount of memory required to run Windows 2000. Windows 2000 Professional requires at least 32 megabytes (MB) of memory.

This contradicts the 64Mb suggested elsewhere on MS site.

 

[bcastner]

You might enjoy Dan Petri's piece on Virtual Memory:

http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm

There are links to various utilities to let you get a sense of what is going on, and how to optomize your system.

 

[Glasgow]

Thanks - I will have a look.