As some of you know, I'm running a Dell PC with Windows Millennium as its operating system and 128MB of system RAM. Not the best choice, but I bought the machine during that narrow window of time when Dell, like most other big-name PC vendors, was phasing out Windows 98 and still waiting for Windows XP to hit the market. Had I bought a few months earlier, I'd be happily running 98 right now (and probably not writing this article); had I waited a while, I'd be one of the many people struggling with XP. But as it stands, I'm stuck with probably the worst of all the Windows family when it comes to memory and system management. Yeccch.

Flashback to a month ago: So, I'm a-sittin' there, trudging through my e-mail, copying and pasting one URL and snippet after another, when all of a sudden I get this irritating little gray box that says something like, "Not enough memory to complete this operation. Quit one or more applications and try again." I look at what's running: what to close down? The browser for the e-mail? Notepad, the tiny little program that I use for taking notes? What else is open? I open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del gives you the screen) and look at what's running behind the scenes. Not much that isn't necessary...Explorer, the System Tray, the antivirus program, the firewall for the DSL connection, and the two apps I have open. That's it. Why am I out of memory? About the same time this starts happening on a regular basis with me, I start getting e-mails from site visitors asking me the same questions. I see that it ain't just me. What to do? The obvious answer was to "buy more memory." Except I didn't want to spend $40 on an extra 128MB memory card at the moment. So what else could I do?

I didn't have a good answer for that. I asked my pal Vince at 5 Star Support what he thought of the problem, and he didn't have any quick and easy solutions. He and I both know that Windows -- all of 'em -- are incredible memory hogs, and Millennium is the worst of the batch. The best he could come up with is for me to update my video card driver. I checked with Dell, and unfortunately I'm already running the most current video driver. Is Vince a knucklehead? Not at all, he's very knowledgeable and very reliable. I recommend his services wholeheartedly. But there's only so much he or anyone else can recommend.

Win ME, like all flavors of Win 9x, has a serious memory leak in the kernel that cannot be repaired, only worked around. Keeping the machine up and running for days on end lets the memory leak out like water going down the bathtub drain. Opening apps, whether it be Notepad or Diablo II, sucks up more resources, and closing the apps doesn't always free up the memory these apps need to run. Eventually I can't do anything, even type in Notepad, until I save everything, shut the system completely down, and start it up again. Then the process starts all over again.

I'm currently investigating this issue, and will talk about it in further newsletters and on my site. But here's what I tried to start with.

First off, I made a habit of shutting down the computer and restarting it before commencing a serious computing session. Not just a Windows restart, but shutting the whole beastie down and starting all over again. Next, I've downloaded two neato little programs -- MemViewer and MemTurbo. MemViewer 2.21 is a freebie from Gene6 that sits in your System Tray and gives you a constantly updated readout on how much memory you're using at the moment (as I was typing the original copy of this, I was using an alarming 89% of the system's memory.) MemTurbo 2.1, from MemTurbo, recovers some of the memory that your system is hoarding through two separate operations, "Recover RAM" and the more in-depth "Scrub RAM". I've gotten to the point where I run MemTurbo before I do anything else. Sometimes I was starting work with as little as 57% of memory being used -- still far, far too much, but about the best I could do at the moment. I've also downloaded a well-known and highly recommended program called Cacheman, from Outertech, but haven't yet installed it. Cacheman lets you tweak and reconfigure your memory settings for optimal usage. I'll let you know what happens with this one. TechTV called Cacheman the best single shareware utility out there for memory management, and it's been highly recommended by Lockergnome, Fred Langa, and other reliable sources.

MemTurbo probably isn't the single best memory recovery program out there, but it's one I'm comfortable with. I've ponied up the $20 to keep it and access the more sophisticated functions.

The problem was suddenly solved by executive fiat. I got home from work one afternoon and found that my wife and Da Boy had bought a 128MB memory card and installed it themselves. No more memory problems, and the computer runs fine. I still use MemTurbo on a less desperate basis to keep hogged memory freed up, but we're not running on the fine edge of disaster with our memory usage anymore. It's a good feeling. If you're having memory problems of your own, your best bet is to stick another memory card in your machine. If the idea of cracking the beastie open gives you the sweats, let the techies do it, but it's not a difficult thing to do by yourself if you're careful. Using memory recovery programs such as MemTurbo is definitely a band-aid approach -- it'll keep you going for the moment, but you should start saving up the $40 or so for a new memory card ASAP.

Here's the lowdown on Windows memory requirements, cribbed from the How Much Memory Does My Software Need? page at the Crucial Memory Experts site.

• Windows XP: Microsoft recommends 64 MB as a minimum and 128 MB for real-life computing; Crucial recommends 256 MB.
• Windows 2000: Microsoft recommends 64 MB; Crucial goes with 128 MB.
• Windows ME: Microsoft recommends 32MB as a minimum; Crucial recommends 128 MB.
• Windows 98: Microsoft recommends 24 MB as a minimum; Crucial recommends 96 MB.
• Windows NT 4x: Microsoft recommends 32 MB as a minimum; Crucial recommends 96 MB.
• Windows 95: Crucial doesn't list this OS (too old?), but Microsoft recommends a minimum of 8 MB, and other sources recommend a minimum of 24 MB. Be aware that Win 95 suffers from a problem with diminishing returns. Too much memory (i.e. anything over 64 MB) tends to make Win 95 choke.

Having memory problems of your own? Got any good ideas for solving 'em? Let me know! One easy one I've come across is the simple expedient of clearing your Clipboard of any large text or graphics files -- if you have limited memory resources, Clipboard can suck it dry really fast. Another thing to be aware of is that some programs, like Notepad, will run out of memory on their own. Doesn't mean your machine is out of resources, but your program can only handle so much before going belly-up.

I've updated my System Stability page to reflect some of the material in this newsletter.

Until next time, keep cranking, and thanks for reading!