System Resources

**Bjwbell** · Feb 26th, 2001, 09:54 PM

My system resource routinely down to 8% is that normal?
BTW it's not terrible slow when its at 8%

**Technocrat** · Feb 27th, 2001, 11:24 AM

DEAR GOD!!!!
That is the lowest constant number I have every heard someone have. If your resources drop below 60% you have a problem. Anything below 40% is considered critical. Here is what you can do to get that up.

By more RAM
Make sure you have AT LEAST 100MB on your primary Hard Drive, 300-500 is good, or get a new one
Stop TSRs, these are things that load up at start up. You can find them in your startup group, or in the registry under the run keys.

Usually these things will take care of the problem.

**parksie** · Feb 27th, 2001, 12:56 PM

Sadly on 98 resources aren't related to RAM. There's no real benefit above 32mb because there's a maximum resource size limit which isn't in NT/2000.
For example, right now I'm on 24% resources. Although my system IS totally buggered

Mine goes down to 0% pretty regularly (as in every day) and I have to restart.

**HarryW** · Feb 27th, 2001, 01:22 PM

I find that after 30 mins to an hour of general computer use, I can't start VB any more, which is a real pain. My resources seem to stay above 60% though.

**Technocrat** · Feb 27th, 2001, 01:48 PM

Parksie: This is true, but if he has like 16MB of RAM, he might want to upgrade. Also it was 64MB not 32MB, because they used the old DOS memory addressing scheme. But the performance from 64 to 32 is small for Windows itself. >64 it is almost nill.

HarryW: I have noticed that with VB it is really bad about that. With VC++ I can run it for hours and hours will little problems.

**HarryW** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:05 PM

Yes I have no problem at all running VC++. I also find that when I type words into the index of the MSDN library, it will take me to the words matching what I type as I type it when I first start my computer, but after a while it won't do it.

**CyberSurfer** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:13 PM

Well, I never seem to have many problems with system resources!

I'm running Windows 95 with 32Mb of 66MHz RAM, at the moment I've got 2 IE 5.5 Windows open, Cute FTP, ICQ 2000A and Zone Alarm running, and I'm at 40% resources....

Also, I never seem to have any problem running VB or anything like that....Is this coz I'm running Win '95??

**parksie** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:27 PM

There'd definitely be less system overhead using 95.

**CyberSurfer** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:39 PM

So is there really any point in upgrading to '98 when I get my PC built???

**parksie** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:40 PM

Yes. 98 is a significant improvement over 95, if a little more bloated.

**CyberSurfer** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:42 PM

Would it be worth even going for Win 2K?? Most of what I do is either Games or Programming/Web Design...

**parksie** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:45 PM

2000 is very fussy about hardware...what's the exact details of the system you'd be using it with?

**CyberSurfer** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:48 PM

I dunno yet! Nothing non-well known...Sound card by Creative, Graphics card by ATi or summink similar....Definately a Gigabyte motherboard and a Creative Blaster CDRW, anyway...

**parksie** · Feb 27th, 2001, 02:54 PM

At present it doesn't support VIA chipsets...it totally arses up on mine.

**CyberSurfer** · Feb 27th, 2001, 03:01 PM

Dang! Win '98 SE it is then!!! Last question....would it be worth just buying an upgrade, or the full CD??? Is there any difference either way??

**parksie** · Feb 27th, 2001, 03:06 PM

To install from the upgrade CD you need to cripple the last installation before you can use it as a full installation...or is it the other way around

There's no real difference.

**CyberSurfer** · Feb 27th, 2001, 03:12 PM

Good good, that'll save me a bit then!! Thanks!

**Bjwbell** · Feb 27th, 2001, 06:33 PM

Thanks for all the feedback.

**Technocrat** · Feb 27th, 2001, 07:07 PM

CyberSurfer: You can trick the Upgrade during a full reinstall, just get your win95 CD, when you go through the 98 install it will ask you where your win95 is, just put in the CD and point it to the win95 dir. Thats all you got to do and you can save yourself about $100.

Parksie: Win2000 does work with VIA chipsets it just a pain in the ass to make them work. You need to find the super secret Via Allin1 ver2.8 drivers. They work in 2000 great, as long as you dont have a TNT2 card.

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 11:57 AM

CyberSurfer: Welcome. Another trick, if you have the room, copy the enter win98 dir to your hard drive before you install. Then install from that directory. That way you never have to find that stupid CD when you do installs. If are you like me you can never find it when you need it the most.

Chenko: If you have the KX133 VIA chipset on your board, they are know to have major problems with most high end types of TNT2 video cards, and Win2K. This of course is not always 100% true with every board and video card. But trust me from personal experience I know its true. I finally just gave up and bought a Geforce 2 Ultra instead of fighting it anymore. Stupid incompatibilities.

**parksie** · Feb 28th, 2001, 02:35 PM

Originally posted by Technocrat
Parksie: Win2000 does work with VIA chipsets it just a pain in the ass to make them work. You need to find the super secret Via Allin1 ver2.8 drivers. They work in 2000 great, as long as you dont have a TNT2 card.

I got those and it still didn't work very well. Even with SP1, the latest drivers for my SB Live!, Voodoo3, and the VIA AllInOne stuff...I still kept getting IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. The memory location it gave was on "PCI Bus", so it's one of the motherboard drivers, I think.

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 03:11 PM

Ouch the Ugly IRQL. Well I can give you some insight but this error can be caused by lots of things.

What the error means is one of two things, either a PCI card asked for a priority level it was not allowed to have at the time, or it tried to access a peice of memory that was inuse or protected.

A common cause is that you either have bad RAM, your RAM settings (wait states, write speed, etc.) are wrong or you have mixed speeds of RAM that have poor adjustment gates (cheap ram). Another thing which is real rare these days is you have mixed parity RAM. Most people dont shell out the cash for parity.

Since you say you have upgraded all your drivers it is unlikely that it is caused by bad drivers.

Any idea what PCI card is causing it?
What type of MB do you have?
Next time it blows can you write down the whole message and give it to me?
Is your Voodoo AGP or PCI?
Do you have a NIC?

**parksie** · Feb 28th, 2001, 03:21 PM

I have them all written down on little pieces of paper

The RAM's definitely okay, since it's a 128MB DIMM out of my dad's PC, which worked perfectly on 2000 (still does). Hardware spec:

Gigabyte GA-6VXE motherboard
Voodoo3 3000 AGP
PCI 10/100 NIC (Unbranded, but same as my dad's PC)
SB Live! 1024 PCI
Cheap ISA modem

(Still didn't work when I took this out and reinstalled)
2 IDE HDs
Creative 12X DVD-Blaster
OEM Intel PIII-500

And the errors (some aren't complete and just have the memory location)
IRQL = IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
PFN = PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
MEM = MEMORY_MANAGEMENT

IRQL - 0x8044AD82
PFN - 0x4E (0x20415, 0x7, 0x0)
IRQL - 0x80440117
PFN - 0x4E (0x99, 0x32, 0x0, 0x0)
IRQL - 0x0A (0x28, 0x02, 0x0, 0x8044B76B)
PFN - 0x4E (0x99, 0x19e8f, 0x0, 0x0)
MEM - 0x1A (0x1c, 0x02, 0x01, 0x80000000+)

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 03:33 PM

Are you sure your settings are correct in the BIOS for your type of RAM?
Have you upgraded your BIOS to the most recent version?

**parksie** · Feb 28th, 2001, 04:05 PM

All the RAM settings are correct, it's the latest BIOS upgrade.

Anyone else got any other ideas? I might try seeing if there are any later VIA drivers out.

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 04:10 PM

How often does it happen?

**parksie** · Feb 28th, 2001, 04:20 PM

It has happened when:

Starting up
Shutting down
Getting a key's properties in PGPKeys
Running Gens (Sega Genesis emulator)
Running Half-Life
Compiling a program in VC++
...and a load of other random times.

I'm going to try reinstalling all the latest drivers and see what happens. *crosses fingers*

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 04:39 PM

Looking at your machine I would guess it to be the NIC or your RAM. Since you seem pretty certain it is not the RAM then I would say its the NIC. NICs are one of the cards that can, and do change PCI priority levels alot. Try taking the NIC out just to see. Also make sure you have no IRQ, DMA or mem sharing on any of your devices.

**parksie** · Feb 28th, 2001, 05:18 PM

Okay...reinstalled all the latest drivers...still doesn't work. So, I'm going to try your NIC idea, and see how it goes from there.

The only sharing I can see is the SB Live and the Voodoo3 which both seem to want IRQ 11...but I can't change it for either of them.

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 06:26 PM

The shared IRQ is prob not your problem, but if you want to fix it, your SB is prob in the PCI socket right below the AGP which is why they are shared and you can not share it. Move it to a lower socket.

**parksie** · Feb 28th, 2001, 06:32 PM

Nope

The SB's far away from the Voodoo3, as is everything else since it gets so hot

**Technocrat** · Feb 28th, 2001, 06:43 PM

Thats one of the reasons I stop buying Voodoo after the 2nd one. You could cook on them. Plus they dropped the ball on FPS when nvidia came on the scene. But I guess thats why they were killed off......oh I mean bought off.

Well then just find a free IRQ, then go into the bios and hard set the PCI Plug and Play IRQ to the free IRQ. Strange that gigabyte would IRQ share the AGP with a slot that is not PCI1.

**parksie** · Mar 1st, 2001, 01:32 PM

Most of the IRQs are set to PCI Plug&Play. Haven't had a change to check the NIC stuff since I need it loads, but will definitely think about it.

However, last time I tried to do some serious troubleshooting (no sound, NIC, modem) it still didn't work.

Now it won't even start up at all

**Technocrat** · Mar 1st, 2001, 01:36 PM

So with all that stuff out before you were still getting the error?

It wont start? Is it beeping? If it is not beeping try unplugging it for about 5 seconds, so the power supply will discharge.

**parksie** · Mar 1st, 2001, 02:00 PM

I took everything nonessential out, and it started fine, but did an IRQL as soon as it got into Win2K. 98 was okay apart from the fact it was missing loads of stuff

**Technocrat** · Mar 1st, 2001, 02:03 PM

Thats really bizzar.
So all that is left is your video card?
Is it PCI or AGP?

**parksie** · Mar 1st, 2001, 02:33 PM

AGP, as mentioned earlier

**marnitzg** · Mar 1st, 2001, 02:49 PM

This is a problem with your m/b. Had a friend with the same problem. Moral of the story, don't buy cheap via crap!

Must say, Win2k rules over 98. 98 crashes every 10-15 minutes because of the memory leak.

**parksie** · Mar 1st, 2001, 02:54 PM

It was fairly inexpensive, but it's technically better than the Intel one...and runs faster on 98. It's just 2000 doesn't support it.

On my copy of 98 even Solitaire's f****d up now

**Technocrat** · Mar 1st, 2001, 04:22 PM

Parksie: You might try a new video card if you have one. Other than that all I got is to wipe and reload.

Originally posted by marnitzg
This is a problem with your m/b. Had a friend with the same problem. Moral of the story, don't buy cheap via crap!

Must say, Win2k rules over 98. 98 crashes every 10-15 minutes because of the memory leak.

Actually VIA chipsets are far superior to Intels. They have a better North And South Bridge controller and a faster bus. Infact many motherboards makers used VIA chipsets for many of there Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II boards. It wasnt until VIA made a deal with AMD that they stopped, for the most part, making Intel Chipsets. Other than there KX133 chipset I have never had any problems with any of there chipsets, and I have been in the computer repair business for 6 years now. Infact when comparing Intel chipsets to VIA, Intel has had 3 different chips sets that have had problems (Minor To Major as they call it). One of them was recalled, you might remember that, it happened last year. VIA has only had 1 chipset with a problem in that same category and have never had a recall. So I dont think "cheap crap" is a fair assessment.

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