From: Vincent Poy (vince_at_pele.WURLDLINK.NET)
Date: Mon Mar 27 2000 - 13:23:16 EST
On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Michael Geary wrote:
> > >System Resources is usually where the problem lies since I never run
> > >out of physical ram, only about 50% of the 320MB on the 770Z and 384MB
> > >on my desktop is ever used, it's the system resources that are always
> > >low and nothing else can open afterwards.
>
> 320Mb RAM and you're running Windows 9x? Put Windows 2000 on that thing and
> you'll be at least twice as happy, probably more.
I would if Microsoft would run all the apps that I had... That's
the problem.
> > > None of these programs will free up "System Resources", just memory
> > > (though some claim to!).
> >
> > Alas, I do not believe there is anything one can do to reclaim those
> > resources under W9x; the way memory is reclaimed by the programs
> > already mentioned exploits a trick in Windows memory management that
> > doesn't have a counterpart for system resources. Perhaps W2K is
> > better in this regard.
>
> Windows 2000 doesn't have "System Resources". "System Resources" is a polite
> name for some 64Kb data areas that the USER and GDI modules in Windows use
> to keep data for organizing and drawing the windows on the screen. These
> areas have 64Kb limits because of the 16-bit code in those parts of Windows
> 95/98. Some of this code dates back to Windows 1.0. Remember the 286?
That's true... I wonder why Win9x never increased the System
Resources limit or made it variable depending on how much physical memory
you had since a 286 only can handle about 1 meg of RAM while machines
these days can handle up to 4 gig.
> Windows 2000 is NT, and NT has never had these 64Kb limits, because the USER
> and GDI code is all 32-bit.
>
> BTW, it *is* possible to magically provide more "System Resources" in
> Windows 9x. Connectix once sold a product I worked on called Agent 95 that
> did just that (among other things). Windows 3.x had even worse limits (same
> 16-bit, 64Kb architecture as Windows 9x, but they were cramming even more
> things into each of those 64Kb chunks), and Agent 95's predecessor, RAM
> Doubler, was quite popular at one time because it increased those limits
> (but didn't remove them completely).
The thing is during the Windows 3.0 days, there weren't many Win
apps so most of the stuff was still DOS based. Even in Windows/286 and
Windows/386 v2.0, there weren't any Windows apps except for a few and
mostly DOS apps. That was the reason people ran DesqView. Does something
like Agent 95, RAM Doubler still exist? I know SoftRAM was a Hoax but I
thought all the ones you mentioned were really supposed to be just virtual
memory products and not resource limit hacks.
> The real solution isn't to put some hack on top of another hack which was
> built on a 16-bit hack to begin with, but to just get yourself a proper
> 32-bit operating system to begin with. Windows 2000 runs real nice on
> ThinkPads. (And you can even run Linux and Windows 9x at the same time using
> VMware.)
I'm sure it runs nice except I wish it was backwards compatible
with a lot of my software since I have software that dates back to the
late 1980's. I don't run Linux but rather FreeBSD since I ran Linux back
in 1993 before and FreeBSD is just more rock solid and stable. Linux
isn't bad but the networking code is still borrowed from BSD.
Cheers,
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