Something is eating my RESOURCES on boot up?

[mitchelt]

Hi,

I have 384Megs of Ram running on a P3-600E Win98SE PC. When I boot up and check available resources via ...help/about, I have usually around 64% to 70%.

Does that sound right? The only things loading that I can think of are:

-ZoneAlarm
-a small Proxy Server program
-Norton Anti-Virus aut protect
-Some SoundBlaster live thing??
-The DSL dialer
-Matrox video control

There is nothing weird in START UP, just Adobe Gamma

Thanks!

Mitch

 

[Elledan]

That 'something' is called Windows.

 

[MichaelD]

Well, honestly, that's quite a bit of stuff you have running on startup. For it to be eating 30% of your resources doesn't sound all that high to me.

Did you do the MSCONFIG thing to see what you are really running on startup?

 

[mitchelt]

MichaelD,

Could you explain "MSCONFIG" thing.

Thanks!

 

[MichaelD]

Start->Run->type Msconfig

Chose the "startup" tab. It will have a list of all your proggy's with checkboxes to the left. If a box is checked, that means that the program starts up and runs in the background.

If you don't want something to startup, uncheck the box and hit "Apply". It will prompt you to reboot your pc. Do it and you're good to go.

MSconfig is a really neat feature. I use it all the time, especially after I load up any new software. Most things these days will TSR (Terminate and stay resident..i.e. run in background and eat your resources)

Even little things like the "EAX" icon that goes down into the System Tray in the lower right-hand corner of the screen eat up resources.

I run Win98SE as well. The only things that startup automatically for me are:

1. Norton AV (which actually is two items, one is the proggy itself, the other is the automatic email protection.

2. The Windows power configuration, which I'm pretty sure is the screen saver/system standby timings/settings from the control panel.

That's it. Feel free to PM if you have ?'s. I'll try my best to answer them. Good luck.

 

[mitchelt]

MichaelD,

Thanks for the quick and detailed response!

Mitch

 

[Helznicht]

Zone Alarm = Hog
NAV is no lightwieght either.

Your usage is about right.....