vista is using too much the hard drive, no mather what amount of ram you have or if you disable the search indexer, windows defender, sistem restore.
Someone should make a program that finds out what is causing vista to take up so much space. I mean… look at linux, it looks cool and has more features and still doesn’t take up as much space. Ms should check their products again.
amusing to hear these XP fanatics strut their stuff.
XP-eol this year.
Not sure about you, I’d move on to the upgrade rather than whining about it all day long.
Interesting article and comments (on the whole).
From Win2K onwards Microsoft/Windows has been stuck in it’s own bootloop.
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Launch new product (unfinished)
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Start pimping next product
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Put most of your programmers on the next product
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Leave a few strays tidying up the new poo you just pooped
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Hope they get the “new” product up to speed (i.e patched and actually working within three or so years) in time for:
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Launch new product (unfinished)
I reluctantly moved to XP last year from Win2K because of one prog that wouldn’t run on 2K, plus the product support on 2K will die. I also bought a laptop that HAD vista on it.
XP compared to Win2K sums up the problem many users here are describing with vista, which just takes it some steps further. This problem is an increasing removal of control from the user towards the OS.
Vista with it’s super administrator account, millions of clicks on “yes I really really want to change the fu{@ing time please, please Mr Computer”. Superfetch. Super indexing. Super graphics, Super slow.
Super for Micro$oft yes, but basically everything they touch is the definition of bloatware - and a perfect reflection of the narcissistic Gates’ ultimate greed.
I’m moving everything to Linux. It’s a learning curve, sure. Yet the idea that the computer will not be doing lots of things I do not want it to do and will be doing the things I want in the way I want them done is just too attractive. It makes the learning curve worth it.
Gates is fighting a war now against Linux, not anyone else. He can employ 64,000 programmers but he can not fill them with love for what they do. He can fill their pockets with cash yet that will not make them do their best work.
Two years ago Linux was not really an option for anyone but an expert if you actually wanted the machine to do something useful.
Today there are linux distro’s that install more easily than windows. OK after that things can get tricky for certain specifics (Digital TV card anyone?) yet the pace of improvement is vast and what we do not see with Linux is it getting fatter and slower and hungrier. We see it getting tighter, faster, easier.
Two years from now, with an ever growing body of developers contributing, Linux will be an out-of-the “free download” OS that will beat the pants off Vista, Windows 7 and anything else Microslop come up with, if they can get someone to buy it.
The main spanner in the works, potentially, IMO, is the anti-virus companies - who will now start paying people to write nasty Linux viruses to scare people off. They are in a lovely snuggly co-dependent relationship with Microslop.
Matthew
ps Whoever is running Norton … just always expect a slow system, however many processors and such it has.
“Someone should make a program that finds out what is causing vista to take up so much space.”
Sysinternals
I love it! Great place to let go over this whole issue…
Look, it’s really simple: Keep the Totally Clueless Sexually-Confused End User on the treadmill with the latest and greatest chrome-plated crap from whatever keeps abusing them. They love it; and it’s great for business! To Vista, and beyond!
For the rest of us: Stop where common sense has defined the natural edge. XP/2K is good for everyday use from 384Mb RAM up, with NO pagefile; bearing any common sense regarding system setup and program selection.
Linux stinks from a common usage standpoint (try installing a typical printer or anything beyond a distro’s spread of pre-installed programs); and isn’t ever going to figure out what the masses wasnt at the rate they’re building their distro Tower of Babel.
When ReactOS FINALLY comes past Alpha we’ll see true, lasting computing freedom for the PC desktop. 'Til then, hang on to what works; and use it for all it’s worth ;o)
Pax.
On my computer downstairs, Vista uses about 87% of the available RAM most of the time. I have 1GB, and I really don’t know why it fails to use the rest.
Also, my laptop is the same, alothough I could attribute it to the lack of use, as it is new, and SuperFetch hasn’t really learnt yet. But I’d still expect it to use more than the 55% of my 2Gb of RAM.
I always want my computer to use as much RAM as it can.
I also want to point out that Linux is very good at caching necessary information before I need it. Linux uses most of the 1Gb it has installed, and pretty much all of that is cache.
All Your Memory Are Belong To Us
nuff said eh?
While RAM-as-cache SOUNDS like a good concept, in practice it seems like another we are microsoft and we know better then you attempt. So now the system knows exactly what programs I’m going to launch? What if I use a lot of different apps? Now I have to wait for the system to unload memory it tried to cache for me so it can load up the app I want to use. Or if I want a certain program to run faster (like a game), there is no way for me to change the priority because the system treats my one big app as not so often and my web browser as often.
Caching works perfect for system files and such that every program needs, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense for user apps. Or at the very least there should be a mechanism for changing it to work better for MY setup, and what -I- want to have happen.
Man im trying to play my lineage2 on vistas had no prpoblems for 7 months, now i cant even log into game because it has a critical error stating that i dont have enough virtual meomory wtf???
My system was running great at about Free-780 suddenly it just started hogging ram down to between Free-0 and Free-8 and kept hogging; as a test I tried to hogg the ram before vista get’s to hogg it but that just made it worse.
Yes; there’s a definate memory hog; it’s not open source so not telling; maybe it’s best that MS sweat it a bit as that’s what they deserve.
I now have it running at Free-1410 and it’s great!!!
Is there possibly a way to turn super fetch against itself?
Possibly before it even caches the memory, you could set aside X amount of RAM to be used for a game of your choice. Since I started using Vista, I can’t play my games online. Although before, I had JUST enough RAM to run the game, but then I got the Verizon Security suite which of course added yet another RAM requirement to my long list of Memory Loads.
So is there a way to set aside some RAM that super fetch cannot cache?
I have over one Gig of RAM available, however it is already cached.
nVida Geforce 9600 GT 512 mb
2GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Basic 32 Bit
Jeff,
I am having a similar problem to this. I am running XP with 3 gigs of RAM on a Gateway Laptop W350A T-1628. I am having a tough time typing in anything, let alone this text box, without it coming to a complete halt. It freezes up every several seconds while typing, then fills it in. I am using Mozilla Firefox as well. Does this issue relate?
I checked my Free and it was 35MB in the Performance manager/Task Manager pane. I am not a tech guy, so any help would be great!
I am only running Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 and Mozilla right now, but I am using 5 windows for browsing, and most only have 2 or 3 tabs but one has around 15. My PC usage is only 6% though in Task Manager.
Am I just using too many Firefox windows at once? Thank you for your help!
Problem is, they did not disable the low memory warnings. Running almost nothing, I get low memory cautions all day long, with display driver outages, blanking screens, and insistence that I close the apps using the most memory like Firefox or Google earth. Stupid Microsoft… PS Ive got 3GB and it isn’t nearly enough for Vista.
Just checked SP1 - same old… the souce seems to be Task Scheduler.
Vista 64 Ultimate SP1… Dual Core 3.2… 8GB of ram. Vista is a memory crack addict… most times I have under a gig of memory free. 7 gigs…into a black hole.
I’ve had my paging file on and off… mostly running IM programs, email…movies… not a big load. Sidebar takes a gig alone, Windows search takes a gig…clearly there is a massive issue with memory allocation within this 64 bit OS. Even after closing the sidebar and search (which should free up 2gb) it free’s up about 400mb instead.
Under a fresh install the system ran great with 8GB, it was normally using 2-3gb… now im sure if I gave it 50GB and ran Outlook it would be 99% used…wtf
Helpfull article . Thanks
As far as I see, the green bar graph shows under Vista how much memory is already in use and cannot be freed for other purposes. The cache can be shrinked / freed if applications need more mem. Same is true for the Physical Memory Usage History if you have Page File off.
But for the same services running in background and just having a desktop, Vista seems to need approx 500 MByte, while XP used approx 150 MByte. This is a huge difference.
Do not believe that you find under Processes a reliable amount of memory used by a process. There are Win32 API functions to allocate memory which does not show up there, but only in the green bar and in the History.
One explanation for the higher memory requirements of Vista may simply be the ill-done winsxs stuff, keeping all old DLL versions on disk and using them for applications linked to them. If there is only a single version of a DLL, its code is in RAM one time and shared by multiple apps (or DLLs). If every app gets an other version of the DLL, then every version occupies RAM for its code.
Even such simple applications as notepad.exe use old DLLs from winsxs instead the latest version.
You can shut it down but why would you want to? Its not like if the memory is filled it cant load anything else. If the memory is full and what you need is there,it just uses it. If its full and what you need is not there,it just overwrites it. It doesn’t take any significant effort to just release the pages and reuse them.