Little trick to help you all!

[Francis Samson]

Have you ever had a process error "Virtual memory full" or the screen turns all gray when you "Render" a drawing in the presentation view???

Well this is the solution to your problem:

How To Clear Your Memory Without Restarting nor injuring your computer?

If you run a windows computer like i do, you’ll know like many others than after a while your system will in doubt start running slow. Most people will restart their computer to remove any idle processes and clear the Tmp memory. But if there’s a simpler way, why restart every time windows decides it doesn’t like you today?

1. Right click on an empty spot on your desktop and select New - Shortcut.

2. Type" %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks" in the box.

3. Click Next.

4. Give your shortcut a nice name like “Clear Memory”.

5. Click Finish and you’re done.

Now whenever your computer starts running slow, save your work, close every open application then click this shortcut to clear out your memory and get your computer running at a normal pace again!

Works best on XP(none tested on VISTA). When you will click your new Icon Clear memory, the DLL will start and you won't see the process except for the Hard drive LED on the front of your CPU that blinks! Meaning that it is working and clearing your MEMORY!

Trust me it makes all the difference! A picture to show you:


I'll even upload the Icon to make it more of a "clean" look!

Francis

[DanEpps]

Ummm...not such a good idea Francis. That is a system dll and is meant to be loaded one time ONLY and then by the operating system. Doing this will CAUSE memory leaks.

Here is what Microsoft says on the subject:

SYMPTOMS
If you load and free a system DLL (for example, USER32.DLL, ADVAPI32.DLL, or GDI32.DLL) repeatedly in your Win32 application, a resource leak occurs under Windows NT and Windows XP. There are two ways to work around this problem: • Change the design of your application or DLL so as to not Load/Free System DLLs repeatedly.

-or-
• If your application's design cannot be changed, then call LoadLibrary on the system DLL before any other actions are performed in your application. Call FreeLibray on the system DLL as the last action before your application terminates. Now, when your application loads and frees the system DLL, only its reference count will be incremented and decremented--no new resources are allocated.

CAUSE
This behavior is by design. The Windows NT and Windows XP system DLLs ADVAPI32.DLL, USER32.DLL, and GDI32.DLL are meant to be loaded only once, that is, when your application is loaded. System DLLs make no attempt to clean up resources when they are unloaded. System DLLs rely on the operating system to clean up all their resources when the associated process terminates.

You can find the full article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171145/en-us

[Francis Samson]

You know Dan, this trick was from a body of mine that works as a computer tech in MTL! I did some research on my side and, You're wright all the way
The idiot is supposedly a PRO in the field but after what i read on this topic!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO good at all and he even told me that to clear the prefetch folder once a week would make my CPU faster!!???

XP systems have a Prefetch directory underneath the windows root directory, full of .pf files — these are lists of pages to load. The file names are generated from hashing the EXE to load — whenever you load the EXE, we hash, see if there’s a matching (exename)-(hash).pf file in the prefetch directory, and if so we load those pages. (If it doesn’t exist, we track what pages it loads, create that file, and pick a handful of them to save to it.) So, first off, it is a bad idea to periodically clean out that folder as some tech sites suggest. For one thing, XP will just re-create that data anyways; secondly, it trims the files anyways if there’s ever more than 128 of them so that it doesn’t needlessly consume space. So not only is deleting the directory totally unnecessary, but you’re also putting a temporary dent in your PC’s performance.

So, he was wrong and it's not a good trick shot to do! I feel so now that i think we need to delete my post!
Obviously, nobody should play with the System cache!!!

Tks for the reply, i'll beat him up when he comes up this weekend!

[DanEpps]

I was in the computer industry for over 30 years before leaving it to persue my woodworking interests. In that time I have spent a great deal of time tuning Windows for better performance. One thing I have learned was that every performance "tip" you get is not necessarily a good one. It is always a good idea to thoroughly vet performance "tips" before implementing them. Here are a couple of Microsoft links dealing with performance tuning for Windoes XP:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 57057.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823887

Memory that has been used by a process and deallocated is returned to the free list to be used by any process that needs it. The page file (virtual memory) is created every time the operating system starts and, contrary to popular opinion, does not become fragmented. It is always a single, contiguous file for each extent.

Now, if you use Window's default virtual memory settings that start with a smaller virtual memory file and grow it as needed, the file is not contiguous after it grows. Each extent IS contiguous but the file is made up of as many extents as needed to satisfy the needs of the operating system.

Take a look at my article on virtual memory (eCabWorld -> Member's Lounge -> Tips & Tricks) for a more comprehensive discussion of setting virtual memory for performance.

Now to the prefetch issue. The prefetch is used to cache copies of frequently used programs and files. The operating system always looks in prefetch for a program or file first. If it is not found there, the operating system then searches the disk catalog for the program or file. When programs are found in the prefetch they can be loaded more quickly than they could by searching the disk catalog for them.

There can be a performance hit if the prefetch gets too large though because searching through a very large list of files in prefetch can take more time than searching the disk catalog. How many files are we talking about before performance is negatively affected? Thousands, even tens of thousands! Even then, most people would never be able to detect any decrease in performance caused by a very large prefetch catalog. The prefetch does use disk space though--you end up with an extra copy of each file or program in the catalog.

Cleaning prefetch will initially cause slower performance because the operating system must search the disk catalog for each program or file you request. As the prefetch catalog is rebuilt with frequently used programs and files, performance will improve.

[Lamar Horton]

Dan, I tried to access your "eCabWorld -> Member's Lounge -> Tips & Tricks" but could not get there. I registered but it doesn't recognize me. I would like to read your article on your virtual memory and see how I measure up.

Thanks

[DanEpps]

Sorry Lamar. I am in the process of making big changes to the eCabWorld website. As you found out, the Member's Lounge no longer exists.

One of the changes I have made is to use phpBB for forums (just like Thermwood's forums). I have now posted that article in the "eCabinets Tips & Tricks" forum and will be adding others in the future.

Everyone is welcome to post their own tips & tricks there to make using eCabinets easier.

You can find the forum by clicking on the "Communication" tab on the menu.

I would also like for someone (anyone) to test the online videos I have posted and post comments about how well they work in the "Shop Talk" forum. The videos can be found at the bottom of the "Training" page. If this format works well I will be posting more videos there in the future.

[Lamar Horton]

Thanks Dan,

I thought I was just not doing something right. All to common occurrence with me.

[DanEpps]

...I thought I was just not doing something right. All to common occurrence with me.

That's MY line...

The eCabWorld site will be changing quite a bit in the near future so check back often to see what's happening.

One thing that I don't have done yet is a single registration for the site and forum. The forum uses a different database for user registration so I have to develop program code to automatically register new site users in the forum. As it stands right now, you have to register in both places.

I put a poll in the Shop Talk forum about the new site design. Check-in and let your opinion be known.

[Lamar Horton]

I registered for the forum also and it said it sent me an email for verification, but I haven't received it. I asked to resend the verification and it said it was sent but still haven't gotten it. Am I still doing something wrong?

[DanEpps]

No, still not you. I also installed a new email server and some emails aren't going through while the spam database gets built up. I activated your forum account and you can use it now.

I am using the activation link method to prevent spamming of the forums by "spambots", malicious programs that register in unprotected forums and flood them with garbage.

[Michael RA Greschuk]

Hello Dan, I noticed that there was no place to sign in from another country .Any chance that's gonna happen in the future

[DanEpps]

Oversight on my part... I will add that but in the meantime you can still register.