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Widowed Windows

Several readers have written us at it@tt that their Windows has either slowed down. Or inexplicably, keeps locking-up with incomprehensible "kernel32" errors. As a fellow victim of Windows (at home), I emphathise with the afflicted in full. I have made several forays to find a solution. I'm still looking for the magic bullet, but have learned a fair deal about what makes for a Windows dicky ticker.

Most Windows users may not be aware that extended use of the operating system causes your available memory resources to decrease. And that too despite not even having run any programs. If you don't believe us, let's show you the ways. In my perambulations across the Net in search of that magic bullet, I have come across (lots of) advice and some cool tools. Let's take them in turn.

The first two are not exactly hidden; they're available as part of the standard Windows 98 install. The two are Resource Meter and System Monitor. Both are true Windows programs; they also consume the resources they monitor. Still, us beggars can't exactly be choosers. Resource Meter is a 3-bar applet that roosts in the tool tray and monitors system, user and GDI resources. The tool tray icon indicates the state of Win with green (good), yellow (warn) and red (you're dead) bars. All the documentation I've found states that green is good, but when the resource bars go yellow, you are moments away from a lock-up. I managed a red. But was "dead" seconds later and had to power off to recover.

System Monitor is for those who like lots of flashing lights and reports. Norton System Utilities has a similar bar that really consumes resources but keeps the idle engaged. SysMon is Windows equivalent and goes way beyond Resource Meter. It can monitor the state of the Dial-Up adapter, disk cache, file system, Kernel and the memory manager. There are several sub-areas for each. Theoretically you can monitor everything. But, as the app itself warns, all threat monitoring sure consumes resources.

Microsoft's Knowledge Base has brave words (actually excuses) about this poor resource management. It squarely puts the blame on poorly written applications. And also advises you not to use them! Great idea. But why are they encouraging Windows users not to use Windows?

To really stress-test the OS, you need to have it running for an extended period. In my test, I left my PC on for 2 whole days (48 hours). To monitor happenings, I used the included Resource Meter. This perhaps was not a perfect (laboratory) test, but I made some significant findings. I began with about 80% of physical memory free. This degraded to under 45%, 12 hours later. And the system never did run for 2 days; it locked up after about 36 hours when I decided to live dangerously and check me email.

IE and Outlook Express are known resource hogs. CPU utilizations goes to 100% when they load and often I'm unsure if my PC has locked up or is still in the land of the living.

Evidently there were memory-leaks. For those who came in late, Windows memory leaks are legend among expert users. When the OS fires up, it and the various applications and drivers it loads, all leech away at available memory. Add the soup your various applications are and the result can be an instant resource famine. That's not all.

The "leak" causes applications that have recently terminated to continue to cling on to resources without releasing it back into the general pool; much like most Indian public sector undertakings.

Because of this tight-fistedness, the available system's resources keep falling until they hit rock bottom. The most common (and expert recommended way) to recover is to restart your PC and Windows. This is extreme and requires interrupting work or tasks. Or you can use third-party utilities that claim to be memory managers like MemTurbo and MaxMem. I've used both and neither really resolves the problem. If anything, matter can get worse. On memory manager, RAMIdle, seemed to be the primary resource hog.

And then, as the holy books like to proclaim, there was a bright light. But first more depressing facts. We can rationalise hypothetically why the system resource memory deteriorated, even when it was not in use. But the most common reasons of memory leak include:

1. Badly written screen savers use resources but when terminated or stopped fail to release them

2. Whenever your antivirus software runs a background check, it causes a drop of up to 25% in available resources. This memory chunk is not released back to Windows after the scan completes

3. Java applets cause significant memory and resource consumption; regardless of the browser used. This was especially apparent at sites which load large Java classes.

The most obvious solution was to increase RAM. We tried that and increased the RAM on our Windows 98SE test bed from 64 to 128 MB. The memory leaks remained, except we now had about 33% more usable time before the system choked.

The ray of light previously alluded to is a nifty freeware, TClockEx (189kB, Win 9x/NT/2K/ME, free, download from: http://users.iafrica.com/d/da/dalen/files/tclockex.zip). This System tray clock replacement includes access to a calendar. Plus reports on system resource use, including CPU utilization. I recommend that you too download a copy and closely monitor Windows resources to avoid those "deaths." TClockEx means you just need a single applet instead of 3: Clock, System Monitor, and Resource Meter.

There is of course end-game: an instant cure to the Win 9x Blues. Upgrade to Windows 2000 Pro SP1 to resolve most of your the memory handling errors. The only downside is this 32-bit OS needs at least a Pentium II with 128 MB or more RAM and at least 1 GB free space.

G Menon
[email protected]

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