Subj : Learned something new To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Thu Jul 25 2024 10:53:00 -=> KY MOFFET wrote to BARRY MARTIN <=- KM> BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ed! > Yours is displaying similar to my Virtual Machine XP -- Ky's the expert > on those numbers so I'l defer to him. KM> Could also have run out of swap space. With only 3GB RAM, of KM> which you actually have use of about 2GB for programs, unless KM> those are mighty small programs they're going to have long since KM> overflowed to swap. And running in Swap will also slow an already slow machine -- look at that HDD LED flicker! KM> Swap is slow especially with spinning rust. I used to always KM> disable it entirely, but now I exile it to a NVMe dedicated to KM> swap, browser cache, and the like, so it doesn't wear out the KM> SSD, and is WAY faster. Tho with 64GB RAM it rarely touches swap. KM> Image editing apps tend to whine if there's no cache. I rmemeber reading a while back (few years) the suggestion for disabling Swap. To me didn't make sense as I interpret Swap as the overflow for RAM, so if no overflow area something is going to fail, and that will usually be at an inconvenient time. I've also noticed Swap is sometimes used by Ubuntu/Linux -- not sure for what but occasionally see a few megabytes is in there. Doesn't seem to be a reaason as tons of room in memory. Guessing something stored in there for the next reboot -- preloaded update?? I'll reboot and it's gone. ...Should also mention in the session the Swap started off empty and some time later (hours, days) was there. > EV> The CMD prompt is Run As Administrator. > EV> There are 21 items running on the Taskbar . > Seems like a high number but LIS to Ky earlier I've got quite a few > applications running, some with multiple parts. LibreOffice has around > eight documents open currently, Remmina has two, so that's ten just > between those two applications. KM> I expect some are multiple instances, as LO does it. Ubuntu 22.04 (and other vesions) will put dots alongside the Favourites icons to indicate that app is running. Sort of like tabs. KM> I have about 25 tabs open in Chrome over on the linux box, KM> because Youtube doesn't queue them properly and forgets what you KM> had queued all the time. Probably figures when you 'heap' that much on it.... > I'm half-thinking the solution (besides closing some apps!) is maxxing > out your RAM. though only 4 GB for a 32-bit OS, or maybe fiddle and > shrink the stacks size. IIRC a stack is either full or empty: if set > for 1024 then 1 through 1023 is a used stack so filled faster than if > stacks set to 512: you have twice as many stacks and if partially filled > you have more free. ...And if you're confused I don't blame you: I have > a mental diagram which I'm 'seeing'. KM> XP already sets them to maxed out, as much as the OS can handle. KM> It isn't like DOS where you had to set upper limits or you got KM> some really puny number. If you muck about with it you'll just KM> mess up its efficiency, and XP is already very efficient. Yes, I remember spending lots of time sequencing my DOS boot (on my XT), maybe some for early Windows, but don't recall doing so as getting close to the XP era. ...Some of that could have been due to the speed and multitude of memory available as compared to the MS-DOS era. KM> Given Ed's system has only 3GB RAM, I'm guessing it's a 3-slot KM> board and those tend to be less efficient than 4-slot, and more KM> prone to be buggy. He'd do better to find someone's office KM> castoff for cheap or free, and upgrade the whole banana. There KM> comes a point where old hardware simply can't do what we're KM> asking of it. And never throw out the old memory until everything's working! I had a 4-slot motherboard which the instructions said could take 8 GB (2+2+2+2). It could use only 6 (2+2+1+1) no matter how I moved the sticks around. KM> I'm running XP64 on an i7, which took a little fiddling to get KM> XP64 to accept the motherboard, but XP runs without any drama on KM> any Core2Duo or Quad, and nowadays they're a dime a dozen. And KM> they max out at 8GB RAM. XP32 can actually do 8GB RAM, and KM> there's a utility to enable that, but was artificially limited to KM> 4GB because so many systems have an onboard Intel GPU, and the KM> driver for Intel onboard GPUs is buggy, was won't-fixed, and the KM> solution was to limit RAM instead. KM> So if you don't have an Intel video chip, you can try that. I KM> haven't bothered, tho I should do it on Cash since it has 8GB KM> physical. Yes: sometimed it's "it works for what I need it for" and so no reason to keep going. KM> XP64 RAM limit is 128GB, but the downside is the command prompt KM> will not run DOS programs or 16bit Windows programs, so for that KM> you need an XP32 VM. KM> However, XP64 can do 16 TB of virtual memory, I can't imagine KM> doing that.... YOU can't?!?!?! ¯ ® ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ® ¯ ® .... Computer Cooking: ACCELERATOR: Microwave --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .