Memory questions

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion (More info?)

My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite often
lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with old
orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get it like
factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a future
project.

My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:

The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the memory
check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss some
problem with the RAM?

Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200 MB of
RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes totals
under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to the
bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used or is
it no good?

Thanks in advance to a great NG,

Steve

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion (More info?)

"Steve" <stevered@nospam.acadia.net> wrote:

>
> If I were to write this information down at the time of the crash would
>that help? I'm only suspecting the RAM because Dr. Watson said something
>attempted to access memory that didn't exist.

No. What would help is for you to ditch Doctor Watson completely and
just let the regular Windows error messages come through. When a
"This program has performed an illegal operation..." message pops up
click on the Details button and make note of the first part of the
Detailed Error Message, up to the word Registers:, and post that
information back here.

That detailed message will be in the following general format:

<culprit> caused a <type of error> in module <victim> [at <error
address>]

This detailed message information is what is needed to search the
Microsoft Knowledge Base and other technical reference sites for known
fixes for a specific error; and it is this information that Dr. Watson
totally obscures and hides. So please get rid of Dr. Watson, at least
until we resolve this issue.


>Memload isn't an optimization program. It lists running tasks, more complete
>than msconfig-startup, and gives numbers on used and free memory and swap
>file. It's pretty small and I just downloaded it to check memory usage.

Okay. Thanks for the explanation. Can you provide the address of the
web site where you downloaded it? I would like to take a look at the
program myself.


>
>The system monitor says swapfile size is 120M and allocated memory is 283M,
>also disk cache(whateve that is) is 83M. does that sound normal for running
>IE, OE, and the system monitor?
>
> Also, I appreciate you taking the time to research my question on google
>and the knowledge base.
>

The figures aren't too bad. Was the "swap file in use" value zero, as
I expected?

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion (More info?)

Open Explorer to "C:\Windows\DrWatson", & click the ".WLG" files in
there until you find the one you speak of. R-Clk inside it's diagnosis
window at the Diagnosis tab, & "select all". Then, copy/paste it to a
post. I'm sure it says more than you've reported.


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
should things get worse after this,
PCR
pcrrcp@netzero.net
"Steve" <stevered@nospam.acadia.net> wrote in message
news:1158guj4puhec30@corp.supernews.com...
| My Win 98, Dell 450Mhz PII, 384MB Ram has been crashing quite
often
| lately. More in the last month or so than it has ever done. It is the
| original factory installation from Dell and I know it is bloated with
old
| orphaned files etc. and these might be the culprits. I'd like to get
it like
| factory new again, if anyone can help with that, great. That is a
future
| project.
|
| My research on the crashing problem to date; going over Dr. Watson
| logs,using Memload.exe, and reading this NG, raises these questions:
|
| The Dr. Watson log I read after one crash says "Win32 kernal core
| component attempted to use memory that does not exist". Now, the
memory
| check at boot counts up to 384 MB no problem. Could this test miss
some
| problem with the RAM?
|
| Memload.exe indicates that after booting up I am using approx. 200
MB of
| RAM and 100 MB of swapfile. However, the list of running processes
totals
| under 50MB. I've gone into msconfig and pared down the startup list to
the
| bare minimum, according to Pacs Portal. Why is so much RAM being used
or is
| it no good?
|
| Thanks in advance to a great NG,
|
| Steve
|
|

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion (More info?)

It isn't totally useless. For instance...

.......Quote...........
The application overflowed its stack. This is typically caused by
unrestricted recursion or an exception inside an exception handler.

Module Name: KERNEL32.DLL
Description: Win32 Kernel core component
Version: 4.10.2222
Product: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Operating System
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation

Application Name: Exec.exe
Description: ZCast
Version: 4, 3, 0, 0
Product:
Manufacturer: NetZero
.......EOQ.............

It states which apps/files are involved & shows version numbers. It SAYS
NetZero blew it's stack! Now, one may go to the NetZero Help pages or
look up KERNEL32.DLL at the MSKB. There may/likely will NOT be a very
specific article to look up with the "'genuine' error message", anyway!
"MinSP's" might have been a good guess for that one, but it ultimately
proved unnecessary to go beyond my normal 4. Also, the lowering of
"hardware acceleration", while it appeared to work, later I undid-- &
still the error never came back (after the first bunch). In the
meantime, NetZero has done several stealth updates, & I haven't seen
that error in quite a while, since 12/21/04 the .wlg says.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=275481
How to troubleshoot program faults with DrWatson


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
should things get worse after this,
PCR
pcrrcp@netzero.net
"Ron Martell" <ron.martell@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6fab51p77q5da5mecpn45bn94mi9k1vspi@4ax.com...
| "PCR" <pcrrcp@netzero.net> wrote:
|
| >Open Explorer to "C:\Windows\DrWatson", & click the ".WLG" files in
| >there until you find the one you speak of. R-Clk inside it's
diagnosis
| >window at the Diagnosis tab, & "select all". Then, copy/paste it to a
| >post. I'm sure it says more than you've reported.
|
| Undoubtedly there will be more verbiage.
|
| And if he is really lucky then something like .0000000000000000000001%
| of the content of the file will actually be something useful.
|
|
| Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
| --
| Microsoft MVP
| On-Line Help Computer Service
| http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
|
| In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
| http://aumha.org/alex.htm