[waynf]

Perhaps I should have gone into this subject long before this.

I am running Windows XP Professional. When I purchased the computer, my ram as indicated in control panel>System was 64. So I went and purchased more ram, 128 to be exact, as the store did not have any larger cards with a two slot card. Then my System info indicated I had 192 megs of ram. Then I did a Microsoft Critical Update Service 2. When I check System Information I get the following:

Total Physical Memory 191.49 megs
Available Physical Memory 28.91
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB

Can you tell me the relationship between these figures, and did the new Service Pak 2 swallow the additional memoy that I installed.

Waynf

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unused ram is waste ram.

Windows XP requires 256mb of ram to run in any usable form so I am impressed your PC is working.

your numbers mean.
192megs is what you have as far as memory
Windows XP is currently using all but 28.91 mb
Your swap file is 2gb
Windows is paging about 40mb to the swap file at present

[gerryf]

unused ram is waste ram.

Windows XP requires 256mb of ram to run in any usable form so I am impressed your PC is working.

your numbers mean.
192megs is what you have as far as memory
Windows XP is currently using all but 28.91 mb
Your swap file is 2gb
Windows is paging about 40mb to the swap file at present

[gen244drdr]

I'm not sure why querryf said unused ram is waste ram. I'd call 'unused ram' ram which is available for use by Windows. Having spare unused ram is good because then windows doesn't swap memory to disk (which is quite slow).
Personally I think XP runs OK on 512, well on 1024 and just plain fun on 2048 if you use excessive amounts like moi.

[Neil Jones]

There is no such thing as unused RAM in Windows and hasn't been since Windows 95.

Windows will find some use for all the memory in the computer at some point. It usually uses it as a sort of cache for loading programs and doing things would otherwise slow performance down. Depending on what you use the computer for, 512Mb-1Gb is adequate.

Some recent boards have issues going past the 3Gb mark and Windows doesn't support anything over 4Gb anyway