Q: A friend called me and asked if I knew what was wrong with her PC. 2 years old Compaq Presario, W95, 32MB RAM. Never had a problem. Purchased as a demo model from a discount place where the line discontinued.
Recently began giving her an error message when trying to launch something – a program, Windows Explorer, even computer. Do you have a notice – u0026quot, not enough free memory, try closing some applications. u0026quot, I told her to open the Resource Meter, after rebooting, and he said 88%. Sysmon turned 30-something megs of dedicated memory. I was wondering what to do to help her. This was a phone call, and I ran out of things to think of trying. I had her check and virtual memory managed by Windows. Where to go from there? I could of had something – like complaining, look at what I know about few indicators of resource use, and that told me nothing. I suggested this might be a time to reinstall Windows, and it appears someone else had suggested it and she does not think it only discs that came with it when it was purchased. She asked the store u0026quot; u0026quot, BJs club, much like a low-grade Sams Club. They were not helpful at all, of course – u0026quot, lady, that was two years ago. It was a floor demo model. Sorry. u0026quot;
Any clues? I would like to help, but I know nothing more here. I have a W95 CD of my own, ORS2 that I would never use. When I told her to install, would accept, or should be re-installed from the same CD as originally? I hope to help without getting in too deep. I suppose they could format, but thats a can of worms on this point
Thanks
guy
Re:I have a 2 and a half year old "war horse" at the office which is a Win95 machine – and keeps on running just like the Energizer bunny. 
I don't know what kind of virus would leave her with little memory, but about a year ago, I began getting the same error messages. It sounds like she has a setup like mine [Pentium 333] where her hard drive is partitioned to a C, D, E, etc. drive – with each drive set to @2.3 gigs (WIN95's limit). What's probably happened is that she installed too many programs to Drive C, which Windows uses as the swap drive, and she's now running out of "memory" because the C drive has very little free space. If that's her setup, she needs to uninstall some programs and reinstall them on one of the other drives.
BTW, mine is a Dell, came w/64 megs of ram and uses PC100 ram. I threw another stick in it recently and would advise that she definitely should get more ram.
Re:o man…. i was gonna say, maybe shes just running out of disk space!
u noe, you store your work, and after 2 years, it builds up on a small system like that, and all of a sudden, no disk space for virtual memory
Re:Win95 doesn't have msconfig but it does have sysedit. For her purposes it will accomplish the same thing.
Re:she can't take those things out through Msconfig.. 95 doens't have it does it?
Re:guy,
2 year old computer has Sdram,3 year old LX chipset used Sdram.
32 is way too little memory,and there's no excuse NOT to get more ram with the prices today.
Re:I can't tell you. I called her just now to suggest the ideas from guy, and she said, well this other guy (who I understand knows more than I do — he used to have a computer shop in town) told her it was a virus. Whatever he told her, I don't know. My conversation with her was brief. She has never had virus protection, although she vaguely thought she did. She said she recognized he name Norton, and thought she had some Norton stuff, but was rather vague about what it all meant. So she was vulnerable. Whatever it was apparently ate up something.
Re:what kind of virus is that ?
Re:well, well. Another friend of hers went over in person and found it was a virus. Apparently has been there for a while and slowly ate up things until nothing was left.
Re:SHe might have just recently installed some memory resource hog program, or the disk might be near full capacity, so the virtual memory isn't cutting it anymore. Compaq's are finicky as hell, so becareful about the ram you buy.
Re:Make sure there's not too many programs being loaded upon startup. To check, click Start–>Run.. and type in "msconfig". One of the tabs should say what's being loaded on startup, check off unneccessary things. If that doesn't work, try reinstalling Windows first, then reformatting. One or the other should fix the problem.
"32 megs only???
Geeez with ram prices the way they are now,Just tell her to go buy a 128 meg stick & be done with it. "
That really helps him a lot! Plus if it's 2 years old, that means EDO RAM, which is fairly expensive.
Re:Yeah, but why any problem at all, when there's been no problem for 2 years??
Re:32 megs only???
Geeez with ram prices the way they are now,Just tell her to go buy a 128 meg stick & be done with it.
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