Put a tree in a blank Bryce document today, and my whole system froze, with an 'out of memory' message. Even hitting ctrl alt del didn't achieve anything :^( Anyone have any advice about which if any of these apps I can get rid of? Why the heck do I need so many apps running in the background? I recognize the anti-virus etc., but Photoshop was the only program I was actually using when this screenshot was taken. XP Home, Radeon 9200 128 MB ( I know, I should have at least four times that)

The easiest thing to do to find out is to type some of those in a search engine like google. If you look around, you will find a webpage that will list the common processes and what they do and whether you should turn them off or not. Most of what is listed there are various Windows services that are launched on boot up. Whether they are required or not will depend on your setup (networking, internet, etc.) TC

DO not get rid of anything which starts with ATI, those are for your graphics card, everything else, research on Google, there is explanation for just abot any .exe file runs in the task menager ! :D jusched.exe for example is automated update fot Java Virtual Machine, not necessary to be there, they do not update it on dayly basis anyways, lol !

Attached Link: http://www.sysinfo.org/startupinfo.html

I know this page i am sending you says Start up list but if you research the page it will give you a compleate defination of what is in the task manager and weathe or not it should be running and even tell you what it does..This site is updated all the time and i use it alot to keep me running smooth..Hope it helps!

Look in the Mem usage column the Biggest is Photoshp.exe and that's your photoshop program. 67megs is a lot of memory tied up in image. You could have it off while you are Brycing. You can't get rid of svchost or explorer. Those are running your desktop windows and managing your other programs. Their values will probably drop when they don't have whatever you have open in photoshop to manage. Qttask.exe is Quicktime running in the taskbar waiting for you to start a movie file. I think AOM.exe is america online instant messenger. You could turn these off and maybe some other things but they don't really buy you that much memory.

msmsgs.exe - Windows Messenger Kill with extreme prejudice, unless you run Outlook Express. ViewMgr.exe - Viewpoint Media Player Kill with extreme prejudice, useless "spyware" that comes with AIM or Netscape symwsc.exe is Symantec Security Center. wdfmgr.exe is part of Microsoft Windows media player 10. VCSSecS.exe is Virtual CD. AOM is Adobe Online Updater. Turn it off. Nisum.exe is Norton Internet Security Suite. jusched.exe is Java updater, as Kemal said. Turn it off. spoolsv and those two LEX are printer spooler and ... you've got a Lexmark printer, right? the first one is printer sharing and the second one, lexbces.exe, is printer's onboard server. You can turn it off, but no need. atiptaxx.exe is a utility for your ATI card. qttask.exe - Apple Quicktime tray icon. Kill it. realsched.exe is RealNetworks Scheduler. IE a part of Real Player. Kill! Kill! Kill! With extreme prejudice! (Inhume with an ax! :-)) CCPXYSVC.exe is Symantec Proxy, ie part of Norton Antivirus. The other cc programs are, too, as well as navapsvc.exe. Tablet.exe is your tablet driver. The rest depends on the system activity and so on. Do not touch. Now, what you do is go to Start -> Run and type msconfig. Go to the tab Startup and turn the specified things off. Restart computer. See if things function smoothly. (They should.) Then UNINSTALL both Quicktime and Real Player. Go to http://www.k-litecodecpack.com/ and download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (18.1 MB). It will give you Quick Time Alternative, Real alternative, bunch of codecs, for some of which you haven't even known about - like Matroska, and Windows Media Player Classic. This last lacks playing lists and visualisation, but can play anything including DVDs and supports soft subtitles as well. And is much much much less memory hog than WMP 10. And doesn't give a flying ffffig about DMCA. ;-) Just be certain, when you install it, that you choose Custom and mark everything. (I suggest Ligos for MPEG 2.) I'd also recommend another antivirus, like NOD32 or possibly Bitdefender, plus Zone Alarm, instead of Norton and Symantec. HTH.

Thanks for all the info!! some housekeeping ahead.

Aye, Erlik covered everything I could think of... Including the K-Lite, which is something everyone should switch to ASAP. On a note, you really don't have many processes running. Did you mean to say that your ATI card has 128MB RAM, or your main system? If you have only 128MB of core system RAM, I'm surprised you can even boot your system. Send me an address and I'll mail you a stick of old 256-DDR-2100, as an act of divine charity. If you are referring to the amount of RAM your Radeon has onboard, which should be 128MB for the 9200, then this will have no effect whatsoever on Bryce, Photoshop, or anything XP-related, as long as your drivers are functioning. Bryce and Photoshop do not use GPU hardware often, Bryce only in Direct-3D or OpenGL viewing modes, and Photoshop never, as far as I know... It's a gaming card... Bryce can become unstable at times, but it seems odd that it would happen from ONE tree? Get rid of some of that spyware and give it another shot!

Pog, if you really have just 128 MB RAM, you'd do good to turn off all the eye-candy. (Windows XP) Right click on an empty area of your desktop, go to Properties and then Effects. Others you can find right-clicking on My Computer -> Properties -> Performance Options -> Visual Effects. I'm not listing them, cause I don't know which ones you like and which ones not. Also, check the amount of your virtual memory. Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance -> System -> System Propeties -> Performance -> Settings. Under tab Performance Options, item Virtual Memory click on change. You should have 1.5 times your RAM as minimal value and 3 times RAM as maximal value. Just occured: have you filled up your disk? That might account for "not enough memory" message. Then, if you use Fast User Switching, disable it. Control Panel -> User Account. Click on Change the way users log on or off and remove the mark beside Use Fast User Switching. BTW, lsd (:-)), the minimal amount of RAM Microsoft recommends is 128 MB both for XP Home and Pro.

okay, this k-lite thingy... why does it want my creditcard number? (I am so not gunna pay them!) can't I get it free (but still legally) somehow? Norton... it scores high in all the magazines tests, but seems to consume lotsa recourses. Also it let through several real nasty trojans and trojan downloaders on my pc a while ago which, in my opinion it REALLY shouldn't have let through, even some free antivirus scans (panda and avg) intercepted them! I was pretty bummed out use I had just payed for another year worth of updates from those bastards only to find out their product lets me down exactly on the very thing I bought it for in the first place :|

Hmm, never had a problem with Norton. Not once. Millions of viruses detected since I started using it, in DOS on a 386SX/16... I was just hoping to help Pog understand that video-card RAM and CPU RAM are separate, just in case...

Attached Link: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm

M&%$#&%ng scum! They are asking for money! I should have figured it was a scam! Sorry people. The real link is up there. And it's a later version, too. Pog, I hope you didn't pay. BTW, in my experience, when people are talking about problems with Anti-virus, it's Norton. NOD32 from eset.com usually scores much better here in Europe. Or even Bitdefender, which I'm running. It's a Romanian program (hi, drac :-)) but I really have a single objection to their antivirus. And it takes less memory. Bitdefender and Zona Alarm together take 24 MB as opposed to 28-30 that Symantec and Norton take on pog's system. OTOH, I turned off their firewall and "anti-spam" modules. Edited to add: When you install K-lite, you don't need to install BS player. I never saw any need in that. But then, I also use Winamp for music, too.

Message edited on: 01/06/2005 09:50

Sorry, giving you a bum steer - the 128MB referred to the Radeon. above is the system setup. It's always run painfully slowly since new, but I'm afraid to touch the way the memory is allocated since I tried it when the pc was only a few weeks old (tired of clicking on a folder and waiting AGES for it to open) and messed up the whole thing, had to reinstall everything from scratch :^( Resources are 78% free, so I can never see why things run so slowly. I defrag etc. constantly.

You can try putting virtual memory minimum at 2 megabytes and maximum at 768 MB. That's what I have, ie, 2 MB and 1.5 times RAM. If the system starts freezing, reboot, press F8 during reboot and choose Safe Mode. Return the things to the previous state. Then, if you have two physical disks, move virtual memory on the other one, away from Windows. Do not put it on a different partition. Is there a reason that you're booting XP from volume2? Got Win 98 or something else on C? Finally, open the box and reseat the IDE cable. There might be a bum connection between the disk and the motherboard. BTW, which file system are you using? XP should run on NTFS, not FAT32. Oh, it will work on FAT32, but... But, the fact that the comp has run slowly ever since it was new suggests they messed up something in assembly. Could be the cable, could be the controller, could be the motherboard...

Attached Link: http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php?filter=&letter=A

Just found a site with a comprehensive file listing of just about all the startup, worm, virus, trojan and just about everything else you can think of....gives the app name, what it looks like in processes, very informative...=)

Great info. I've printed off this page so I can attack it later on when I've got the time to concentrate on it, and use the instructions on the sysinfo website. Thanks everyone!

Attached Link: http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Here's another site where I found everything that was running in my task mgr. and then some, also very informative....

Attached Link: http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/

another task mgr listing thingy :)

Erlik - this is how the memory is allocated at the moment. DUH!!! I can't figure out if it's right or not, I can see it says the recommended is same as you said, but I don't know if that's what's actually applied (I'd never make a tecchie). How would I find out what the file system is?

PS - ever have days when you feel mentally subnormal? :^(

try the recommended amount as max setting :) I think that should be okay :)

I just can't get my head around how they've laid it out. Why can't they just say Current Setting is 'some number', Recommended Setting is 'some number'? Why can't they, huh? huh? grumble grumble grumble. Now I see why I messed it up so completely last time, I can't make hog or dog of it.

I have my minimum set to equal the amount of physical RAM each machine uses... So on my main rig, it's at 512. The max is set to 1.5 GB. This gives me a lot of breathing room. Also, this computer almost never crashes. It's the most stable PC I've built...

Drat! So now I've got to create a pic with lots'n'lots of wierd-looking figures (I wonder what a process actually looks like?) running on a treadmill... I don't think my PC will cope with that:-)) (Sorry for going OT - couldn't help it; but the concept just came to me and... well, I probably won't be taking it any further... I'll shaddup now.) Cheers, Diolma

What DOES a process look like? We'll need microscopes, but I'm thinking you're on to something Diolma...!

Well, if you're into clocking the last ounce of speed out of your machine, just after you've installed windoze and no other software you should go in to these virtual RAM settings and set both initial and max to something huge (say 4 times RAM). This will give your swap file a large contiguous area on the hard drive which will give better performance when swapping/virtual memory use does occurr.