I guess you talk about the explorer.exe program which appear in my list of working programs when I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL?

It shows around 4to5,000 ko on average... I have other process which take way more memory, like vsmon.exe and especially svchost.exe... As well as spydoctor.exe and firefox.exe, which I am currently using to write this. :P

I don't see how saving 4000ko can help you boost your computer so much. If it's the case, chance are that you should not even run XP on that computer. And that you should consider either upgrading or simply buying a new one...

Well when I go and play a game I close every process so I save up at least 60-70 MB RAM, another 5 is a small performance boost, but nonetheless it is, no one is forcing you to use it ;)

Oh, I won't. My 512 mo of ram are way enough for the task on my computer. I was simply curious and tryied to understand why you ever made such a thing in the first place.

heey cool good file

I have 512 now, and i REALY need to get another 1GB module this week. Some of us need more RAM then others :)
It can have its uses, shure.

Those numbers are quite deceptive and you should never use the task manager to elicit exact numbers. It's a measure of allocated memory to a particular process, and a number especially deceptive when talking about Windows components because of the way memory is managed. Much of explorer and the component libraries which underlie it are actually other shared libraries or processes which are hidden from that aggregation.

Besides, available memory should be near-zero at all times, anyway. Why page things out when you have free memory? You'll find that Linux will actually allocate most all of your memory after it's been up for some time, yet the system remains quite responsive.

Optimizing the "available memory" measurement in Windows is a go-fast stripes endeavor which is completely useless unless you understand the context and impact of what you're doing.

How much system memory does your computer have in total?
If your memory is crammed up like you say it is, then it must be 128MB or even less.
If there isn't any free memory left, then it is time for a memory upgrade.

Sounds like some application having a "hole", eating up all the memory but never releasing it again. LOL

I have between 512 and a gig of RAM.

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Sounds like some application having a "hole", eating up all the memory but never releasing it again.[/quote]
You're talking about a memory leak, and what you were saying was in response to my Linux comment, which I think you completely misunderstood. The Linux kernel doesn't have a memory leak that huge, rather it's a well-calculated use of system resources.

Look, go back and read what I said. Granted, it wasn't the most clearly-worded post in the world, but it makes enough sense that you should be able to understand the gist of it: that unallocated memory is wasted memory. Allocating most of the remaining available memory to already-running processes can vastly increase performance of the machine.

:tai: I won't discuss linux memory management with you because 1.) I'm not familiar with that and 2.) it isn't the topic of the thread.
But I do know a bit about Windows and it clearly does not allocate all free memory to already running processes.

Also it does make sense to stop/kill all unnecessary processes if you are short on free memory und want to start a complex game, like it was described in the earlier posts. Although I would rather use the task manager or Process Explorer (by Sysinternals) to do that than a homemade solution (@bp103: sorry, pal. ;) )

Again, read what I originally said. I know that the Windows kernel doesn't do it and I used Linux as an example of something that does do it.

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Also it does make sense to stop/kill all unnecessary processes if you are short on free memory und want to start a complex game, like it was described in the earlier posts.[/quote]
Again, I wasn't debating that. All I was saying is that the actual memory allocation isn't all that terribly important, the usage of that memory is. The working set for explorer could be expanded to 1gb and it wouldn't make the least bit of difference in performance (generally, as I'm conservatively assuming that explorer isn't actually going to use much more than 15 or 20mb of that).

What I was saying is that the actual usage/allocation of a process' working set is what has the impact on performance, not the size of the working set the kernel allocates said process.

So now that we've now established that you don't actually understand memory allocation and usage I'd appreciate it if you'd cut the condescending "maybe you don't have enough RAM" garbage. You attempted to pick apart a post you didn't understand and got so caught up in doing (incorrectly, mind you) that you missed my entire point.