Out of Memory

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 12:13 PM

Am i getting memory leaks somewhere? After i have loaded my computer (i.e clicking the power button on

), i usually load up AOL 8.0, Visual Basic 6 Enterprise and Winamp 2 at most. Lately if i open Visual Basic up more than once, say twice i get a error message saying Out Of Memory. The problem isnt VB, as i get the same message using other apps, though VB is the common one. My pc specs are:

Windows 98 Second Edition (SE)
128.0Mb Ram
12Gb Hdd
586Mhz Intel Celeron Processor tm
56K Dial-up (though irrelevant).

Any ideas as to why im suddenly running low on memory? I have checked for:

Spyware
Viruses
Trojans
Worms

and checked Msconfig to only run programs i want at startup.

Thanks

**DiGiTaIErRoR** · Dec 19th, 2003, 01:13 PM

Windows 98 sucks.

Product cycles of Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lif...onsumer.mspx#6

Windows 98 enters the "Non-Supported" phase effectively on: January 16, 2004. Less than one month away.

Upgrade.

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 01:16 PM

Thats crap, im getting a fat cheque hopefully soon, might get a new PC

**DiGiTaIErRoR** · Dec 19th, 2003, 01:22 PM

I suggest Windows 2000. It has a longer life than XP Home, but not pro.

Odd.

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 03:35 PM

So 2000 is better than XP home, but XP pro is better than both?

And dont most new PC's come with XP anyway, sure XP has the bells and whistles but i like Win98 for its simplicity. Its too memory hungary XP, ill look into Win 2000.

Anyone have other suggestions on this?

**papacorn** · Dec 19th, 2003, 05:41 PM

Win2000 is the best, I think M$ really screwed up when they made it. Thats why they tried to shove XP down our throats so fast.

Madboy....how full is your hard drive? and what tools did you use to check for spy/adware?

**Kasracer** · Dec 19th, 2003, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by papacorn
Win2000 is the best, I think M$ really screwed up when they made it. Thats why they tried to shove XP down our throats so fast.

Windows XP Pro is the exact samething as Windows 2000 pro but with more features and clear type.

Windows XP Pro is better than 2000 Pro. However, there is nothing wrong with 2000 (I am running it right now)

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 05:50 PM

Originally posted by papacorn
Win2000 is the best, I think M$ really screwed up when they made it. Thats why they tried to shove XP down our throats so fast.

Madboy....how full is your hard drive? and what tools did you use to check for spy/adware?

C: Used > 1.98GB
D: Used > 2.10GB

Trojans: > The Cleaner
Virus: > Avast AntiVirus
Worms: > Worm Blaster
Spyware : > Search & Destroy (S&D) and Adware

**papacorn** · Dec 19th, 2003, 06:12 PM

Hmm...C:\ & D:\..Is your D: drive a "System_Save volume like on the earlier compaqs?? If so I have seen those volumes fill up with garbage then produce that Out of Memory error..So just cleaning out the garbage would clear that up...And/Or double your memory [at least]...AOL[bah]8 is a resource pig and so are the others. You dont have "task manager" on '98 to see what is really running to see who the culprit is. Farber Toys works good for that.

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 06:17 PM

I know, AOL eats my pc

. D: is my partition for VB, music etc (my dad uses C

.

I made my own process viewer like program, there seems to be nothing running out of the ordinary

**papacorn** · Dec 19th, 2003, 06:48 PM

Then you must need more RAM....When I was in M$ school that was their[M$] answer for everything..more RAM...Just currious have you done a reg. search for "EZULA"?

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 06:50 PM

Whats EZULA

**papacorn** · Dec 19th, 2003, 07:02 PM

EZULA is evil spyware brought to you by TopText & iLookup claiming to make your internet browsing experience easier and more memerable than ever with everything at your fingertips.....What it REALLY does is keep track of your internet habbits & buying patterns then swamps you with popup ads that They think you would be interested in. For instance I get porn popups....

....Then they sell this info to other businesses...Kind of like AOL does except EZULA spawns a lot of threads and clutters up registry, hard drive, memory and they do hijacking also.

**Madboy** · Dec 19th, 2003, 07:03 PM

Evil, ill have a look now...

**Ideas Man** · Dec 20th, 2003, 09:09 PM

Sorry to burst your bubble, but 2000 hits the initial cycle next year too.

**Madboy** · Dec 21st, 2003, 04:43 AM

so it seems things are going XP

**Madboy** · Jan 2nd, 2004, 12:03 PM

**Madboy** · Jan 24th, 2004, 12:11 PM

It now takes 2 minutes on boot up to check RAM, before it loaded straight away, the crap waits till its about 10000KB or something before deciding to load

**Kasracer** · Jan 24th, 2004, 02:32 PM

Originally posted by Madboy
It now takes 2 minutes on boot up to check RAM, before it loaded straight away, the crap waits till its about 10000KB or something before deciding to load

You can skip that you know.... If it's loading when it gets to 10000kb, then perhaps your ram is screwed up (after all, that is only ~10MB of ram. I can't see you running anything on that)

**Madboy** · Jan 24th, 2004, 05:21 PM

Well i wasnt sure how many digits are in, theres more than 10Mb though! 128.0Mb RAM i have, it loads something like 9800000Kb or something i think

**visualAd** · Jan 24th, 2004, 05:51 PM

If you have 128MB of rRAM in your system that is: 131,072KB

If your system is loading up 9800000Kb of memory that equates to nearly a giga byte. It looks like you have a massive page file. It may help if you reduce the amount of Virtual Memory Windows is allowed to use.

If you want my advice uninstall Windows and put RedHat Linux on.

**Kasracer** · Jan 24th, 2004, 05:54 PM

Originally posted by visualAd
If you have 128MB of rRAM in your system that is: 131,072KB

If your system is loading up 9800000Kb of memory that equates to nearly a giga byte. It looks like you have a massive page file. It may help if you reduce the amount of Virtual Memory Windows is allowed to use.

If you want my advice uninstall Windows and put RedHat Linux on.

1. RadHat sucks as a desktop OS
2. Virtual Memory is NOT included in the memory check the BIOS does. The BIOS has no native way to read MS' file systems so it can't go in and start searching through the page file. If it was that easy, Linux's NTFS read/write support would have been out of the experimental stages a long ass time ago.

**Madboy** · Jan 24th, 2004, 05:57 PM

I wish i could screenshot DOS boot up, id show you. It loads random amounts of Ram, for the RamCheck thing. Any idea, or might i need a new RAM card? My pc always dramatically decreases below -10% free ram, programs cant load fonts, error messages popup. Its annoying as hell

**visualAd** · Jan 24th, 2004, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by kasracer
1. RadHat sucks as a desktop OS

Mandrake is quite nice. I used redhat as a server OS and didn't have any problems with the desktop one - except those bloody RPM's.

Originally posted by kasracer
2. Virtual Memory is NOT included in the memory check the BIOS does. The BIOS has no native way to read MS' file systems so it can't go in and start searching through the page file. If it was that easy, Linux's NTFS read/write support would have been out of the experimental stages a long ass time ago.

Sorry - I didn't read the posts properly.

**Kasracer** · Jan 24th, 2004, 06:00 PM

Originally posted by Madboy
I wish i could screenshot DOS boot up, id show you. It loads random amounts of Ram, for the RamCheck thing. Any idea, or might i need a new RAM card? My pc always dramatically decreases below -10% free ram, programs cant load fonts, error messages popup. Its annoying as hell

Since you use Windows98, your PC hardware is probably quite old. Personally, I'd reocmmend an upgrade. Go out and build a new system or buy a computer.

If the BIOS checks the RAM and it adds up to different amounts each time, I'd imagine either the ram is bad, partially bad, or is going bad. However, because of its age, the motherboard may be dieing as well. It is a bit hard to tell.

Do you get memory errors in windows? Stuff like "Failed to write memory 0x32487h to 0x3448fh"?

**Kasracer** · Jan 24th, 2004, 06:02 PM

Originally posted by visualAd
Mandrake is quite nice. I used redhat as a server OS and didn't have any problems with the desktop one - except those bloody RPM's.

I hated Mandrake. It is quite slow compared to most Linux distros when properly setup. RedHat 7.3(or maybe it's 7.2?) is nice as a server OS, but not the newer ones. A Gentoo, built from stage 1, would be optimal for a server or even FreeBSD (I've heard performance gains when using FreeBSD versus most Linux Distros in servers. hell my website is hosted on one).

Originally posted by visualAd

Sorry - I didn't read the posts properly.

I do that frequently

**Madboy** · Jan 24th, 2004, 06:09 PM

Due to power failures, i got a new motherboard last year, my RAM is about 4 year old i guess, upgrade is in hand i reckon. As for the write thing, no i dont get problems like that, but my computer always hangs on shut down

**Kasracer** · Jan 24th, 2004, 06:12 PM

Originally posted by Madboy
As for the write thing, no i dont get problems like that, but my computer always hangs on shut down

Then it may or may not be your ram. The hanging on shut down was a well known flaw in Windows 98. Don't know if you can get rid of it or not.

http://www.memtest86.com/ Go there and download memtest86, throw it on a floppy then restart your computer and boot from the floppy. It will check your ram and tell you if it's bad or not. Only problem, it usually takes about 14 hours to complete and since your system is alot older, it may take a little longer, not sure (it isn't proessor depandant).

**Madboy** · Jan 30th, 2004, 06:02 PM

Is that test safe kas?

And my RAM (or something) is crackling away when i load windows up

**Kasracer** · Jan 30th, 2004, 06:58 PM

Originally posted by Madboy
Is that test safe kas?

Yes, it only tests your ram, however, the test may take 14 hours to complete

Originally posted by Madboy
And my RAM (or something) is crackling away when i load windows up

Ram shouldn't be making a crackling sounds. Is the sound coming form the hard drive?

**Madboy** · Jan 31st, 2004, 06:30 AM

I dont know, but if you use fairly loud computers and you load a program up, you can here the RAM i think it is (or maybe the processor) thinking of what to do. It sounds like that, but it gets noiser, its falling apart

My computer is 4 years old, maybe more. Everything is old except the motherboard, which was replaced last year sometime. So, im stuck with a 4 year old RAM, Hard Drive and Processor. And what ever else.

Whatever it is, its noisy. And sometimes it clicks very loud, windows crashes. Sometimes when i load my computer up i get an error "Searching for boot floppy.....not found" and it clicks again. So my computer wont load most of the time

Im baffled totally

Thanks for your help kas

**Kasracer** · Jan 31st, 2004, 05:32 PM

Originally posted by Madboy
I dont know, but if you use fairly loud computers and you load a program up, you can here the RAM i think it is (or maybe the processor) thinking of what to do. It sounds like that, but it gets noiser, its falling apart

That is your hard drive. When you execute a program, it has to be copied to the ram from the hard drive before it can execute. The processor and Ram shouldn't make any sound (unless you can hear electricity).

Originally posted by Madboy
Whatever it is, its noisy. And sometimes it clicks very loud, windows crashes. Sometimes when i load my computer up i get an error "Searching for boot floppy.....not found" and it clicks again. So my computer wont load most of the time

If the hard drive is clicking and you get errors like that... well I hate to be the be berror of bad news but...
BACK UP EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW!!!

Hard drives should not make a clicking sound. When they start to click, it means it is about to die and if you don't back-up everything you need, you may turn your computer on one day and the hard drive will never spin up and you'll be out of luck getting ANY data off of it unless you pay thousands of dollars for a professional to do it.

You may want to look into getting a new hard drive soon, or maybe just getting a whole new computer (everything about your computer is outdated).

**Madboy** · Jan 31st, 2004, 05:36 PM

Its been clicking on/off for the past 5 months or so i think. And my dad's method to help boot it up was to smack the casing. I was afraid it was the RAM, but the Hard Drive is worse

I will take your advice Kas and back up stuff, what is the best method, to create an image of my hard drive?

Thanks.......

**Kasracer** · Jan 31st, 2004, 05:39 PM

Originally posted by Madboy
I will take your advice Kas and back up stuff, what is the best method, to create an image of my hard drive?

No idea. Windows has a built in back-up utility, but I would recommend just getting your data off of the computer and not worry about the OS and such, that can be re-installed.

Just don't put it off. I'm shocked the hard drive has been working for as long as it has, especially if it has been clicking for 5 months.

**Madboy** · Jan 31st, 2004, 05:42 PM

It might be longer im not sure, and what amazes me is you see all these new computers which are built for lenthy task etc, my comp is on all day, AOL, VB and stuff loaded on my 128.0Mb RAM im suprised it has lasted so long.

Well, its time to get out the CD-R's, good job i kept my trusty Win98 and Office 2000 disks after last years format. I hated that format (my first ever), took a week to realise i was installing the bloody modem in the wrong serial port, and i lost my graphics driver and cd last time. So i was stuck with 256 colors last time. I know what to expect this time however.

Thanks for your help and assistant Kasracer, i see your not so bad after all

**Madboy** · Feb 7th, 2004, 07:23 AM

Well everything has been backed up, just waiting for it to explode now. It loaded straight up today for some reason, but that didnt last it still clocks up random ram byte figures. it says:

Checking NVRAM...
9800000Kb

or something.

Takes an extra minute to boot now too

**visualAd** · Feb 7th, 2004, 07:40 AM

The hard drive in my Pentium computer has been dying now for about 4 years.

I have Windows 98 installed and every now and again the entire system dies and I have to re-format the hard drive.

When we bought the computer it had a 1.2GB drive. It's now 900MB

**Madboy** · Feb 7th, 2004, 07:42 AM

woah, and i thought having a 12Gb hard drive was bad. I found out the other day my processor isnt 586Mhz, its a 533Mhz Intel Celeron

**TomGibbons** · Feb 7th, 2004, 07:54 AM

I found an 8mb HDD a few weeks ago from back in the day

**Madboy** · Feb 8th, 2004, 07:57 AM

I decided i shall sell my PC, the fans covered in about 10" thick of dust (never cleaned in 5 years, been moved around a lot too). HDD, RAM, Processor all 5 year old (so i just found out, not 4 year old). Motherboard 1 year old, casing 1 year old. Ill take £175 ono

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