RAM problem or paranoid

Hello;

I was checking system information on windows & noticed
this line about my RAM. now its got me thinking :

(
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OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Processor x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2423 Mhz

System Directory C:\WINDOWS\System32

Total Physical Memory 256.00 MB // this is random mem
Available Physical Memory 56.22 MB //this is what i have
Total Virtual Memory 1.16 GB
Available Virtual Memory 821.80 MB
Page File Space 934.53 MB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if at the time there was no program running , then why
would it show available RAM as 56.22 when it should be
atleast in the range close to 256.
My hard drive = 80GB
RAM = 256

is my random memory corrupted?

How can i check on it to make sure?
:confused:

thx

I downloaded a mem optimizer to free RAM .
now avail mem stands at 133.
http://www.softlandmark.com/Memory.htm

good sight.

is there a way to do it myself(within windows) to free ram without the use of this utility in the background.?

No, there is something wrong with your computer. There is no way that 256 can drop to 56 in the idle state (no programs open). Do you have spyware installed? real player? quicktime? a bunch of task icons? I bet that you have all these innessecary programs running. If you don't, I recommend a reformat. Don't install anything you don't need.

For reference:
My XP Home with 192 RAM has 90 free in the idle state.
My 2000 Pro with 256 RAM has 140 free in the idle state.

Opps, forgot. When you just started up the computer, its normal for RAM to be low. But not THAT low.

Well i had lots of Mplayer, real, qtime,,,,,icons.
disabled some and deleted the rest. how ever
not much changed stands at 53.
in fact right now with just explorer on it stands at 36.:rolleyes:

Wow, that sounds real low I have all kinds of junk open at this moment and still have 186MB left out of 384MB.
What do you get when you boot into safe mode?
I would guess you have things loading up in the background that you are unaware of.

Don't forget about Windows services as well. Those can take a bit of space.

What do you get in safe mode though. It sounds low no matter what, but safemode should help show whether it's something really wrong, or just a bunch of programs running you don't know about.

I'm not sure what I get off a fresh start, but as it stands right now (uptime of approx. 4 days) I have 241 MB used out of 512.

with 512 MB of RAM on Windows XP Home AND running Internet Explorer I still have 405 MB of RAM left. I haven't even got time to optimize my comp yet (I just reformatted a few weeks ago). After I clear out some of the services and I clear all the spyware and put some optimizers up, I'll have a little more.

Yea, services suck. But even now I am running Norton Antivirus (which includes 2 services), MSN,Winamp, VC++, I was running Kazaa, and I was running RalliSport Challenge; I still have 194 Megabytes free out of 384 MB of RAM. Go shut down services like Windows Help, and Messenger Service, maybe a couple of other things.

edit: Oh, yea... I'm running IE too ;)

Well in safe mode i get 154.
in task mang there are quite a few programs run
real schadualer(eventhough real is not open), lots of system programs, lalala,,,,

It takes a lot of crap just to get Windows XP to run, the way it is setup. Microsoft was copying off of Linux and wanted their own little multiuser thing too, but they made it, as usual, bloated. I hope Longhorn fixes some of these issues.

Man, if I could just get my sound and modem working in Red Hat, I would size down the windows partition to like 8 GB or something, and make my root partition 28 GB instead of 20. The only reason I use windows anymore is for games and internet.

If you want to limit the number of programs running, you can use a neat trick i found out. At the start menu, go to run. Then, type in "msconfig" then press enter. A window will pop up and then click the startup tab. There you can select which programs that initiates on start up. This will definitely give you extra ram when you disable the programs not needed. As a safety, I would first right down all the programs running before altering it. That way if you disable something that is not to be disabled, or something your going to need, you can re-enable it after startup.