To much ram being used, any help appreciated.

[fishbowlhead]

Ok Got 2 things on my laptop that id like to reduce on ram memory if i can. One is dwm.exe (desktop window manager) which is using 35.000k of ram, the other is explorer.exe (windows explorer) which uses between 12.000 and 25.000.

Not got many programs on the laptop, just cs2 and contribute, so its pretty clean from junk and what not. But got those two things using 800meg of ram between them, which seems an awfull lot when the computers doing nothing.

Any way to reduce it? any help is appreciated guys.

[SegaMark]

explorer on my PC is eating up 35,732K - so yours doesn't seem so bad, I don't have dwm.exe running on mine, since I'm XP, but I doubt you'd be able to reduce the usage of those two to be honest.

I don't see how it's eating 800MB RAM when the two figures you posted are between 12,000 and 35,000K... :\

How much RAM do you have in total?

[fishbowlhead]

Got 3 gig of ram on my laptop. Those figgures dont add up i know but everything else isnt doing anything or using virtually any ram up when the systems idol.

[Hohum]

dwm.exe is the desktop compositing engine, which gives you your graphics hardware accelerated desktop with effects (such as transparency). You can use a basic desktop theme instead, which will turn this off, but it's pretty ugly without to be fair (plus you'd gain CPU usage most likely, as the desktop will be rendered using the traditional software-based method). You'd also lose v-sync on the desktop, as far as I know.

Explorer you can't really do anything about I'm afraid. Having said all this, it won't matter one jot if you have a decent amount of RAM in your PC (you have an effective usage of 3GB, right? Going by your other thread, that is). Those two processes won't be the sole cause of using 800 meg of your system, by the way - it's the various other system processes on top of that aswell. Hell, mine is currently using 1GB whilst effectively idle, doesn't matter though as if I were to launch something demanding on resources then it'll free up a fair chunk of that if needed anyway.

[RLench]

Are you using Vista? Because, as hohum says, this is how Vista handles RAM. It will pretty much fill up as much RAM as possible when it's not being used. It pre-loads common programs so that, when you want to use them, they load instantly. If you try and load something else then it just loads it as normal and scraps something else. Mine is pretty much idle while I download some updates...and Vista is using about 900mb of RAM because it's loaded everything on its own. It seems a bit silly at first but I like the idea.

[Hohum]

Yeah, besides using a chunk of your RAM for system processes, it tends to use pretty much all the rest that's left over aswell to pre-cache your most used files and applications for quick access (shows as 'cached' in the performance tab of task manager). If a program needs a large chunk of space, it frees it up for use. It makes sense really, why not make effective use of the memory in the system instead of leaving most of it idle and unused (such as WinXP does).

[vanpeebles]

Vista is a real memory hog, I've set up a good few laptops now with Vista and 1GB of ram. They all used a good 800MB straight out of the box before you do anything

[fishbowlhead]

Ill just put it down to being a memory hog a leave it at that then, thanks for your help guys.


Ive also been thinking of a Mac Powerbook for my design work lately. Seeing as i only use it for Photoshop and Contribute. Would a new Powerbook cope with these tasks better than my laptop?

[bingowings]

i have a standard black MacBook and it runs CS3 perfectly.

OSX handles memory very well and even on my old G4 Quicksilver it hardly ever bottlenecked and caused the entire system to slow down. even if Photoshop was chewing all the memory i could always swap to another app or do something else without too much problem.

[fishbowlhead]

I keep teasing myself with the lovely looking macs, then i look at the price

[bingowings]

yeah, it's bit of a kick in the pills. i won't try and convince you they are worth it - because on the face of it they aren't.

i tend to gauge value on how long you will use the thing before it's replaced. my Quicksilver was released in 2001/02 or thereabouts. i bought it from a mate about 4 years ago so it was already long in the tooth even then - i only replaced it with my MacBook this January and it's not like it was getting light use - every day i caned it with Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightwave.

i can see me using the MacBook for the next 4 years before i even consider an upgrade.