RAM issue with Internet Explorer

D

Digs

HI,

RAM = Physical memory....

I have IE 6.0, Win 2000 and 1000 MB DDR Ram...with 2.8 GHZ CPU, Intel Chip.

On first starting the PC, no other applications open...I open IE and browser around for a bit the RAM FREE percentage goes from 77% down to 66%...thats 100MB of ram..so thats seams ok....BUT when I close the IE the ram free stays at 66% and does not return to 77% or near that...why is the RAM or physical memory not freed up ??

Thx In Advance
 
You're looking your PC's memory too two dimensionally. The amount of "free" physical memory at any moment isn't as straightforward as you might think. In this case, you're dealing with the dynamics of both the virtual demand paging executive and the disk caching manager.

"Free" and "usable" are two different things. In your case, just closing IE doesn't necessarily mean a lot of physical memory will be immediately "freed". For example, dynamic link libraries (the bulk of memory used by a program like IE) may persist in memory simply because there's no immediate demand requiring currently loaded but unused DLLs to be flushed.

The demand paging executive isn't going to flush the DLLs immediately just because you closed IE if it doesn't have to. You might restart the program or another program that needs one or more of the resident pages and as long as the pages aren't currently needed for something else, if it leaves them resident it may avoid having to load them again if needed.

Same with the disk cache - IE is saving temporary files with the contents of pages, files, pictures, etc. involved in your web browsing. These are being written to the IE Temporary Files area but the Windows disk cache manager is also allocating memory to cache the disk activity. The disk cache persists (also on a demand basis) in memory outside the scope of any one program. As such, if there was a bunch of temporary internet file stuff written - much/all of it may persist in the memory cache after you close IE.

As a result, just closing IE may have little impact on the instantaneous reading of "free" memory.
 
Quote from Digs:

HI,

RAM = Physical memory....

I have IE 6.0, Win 2000 and 1000 MB DDR Ram...with 2.8 GHZ CPU, Intel Chip.

On first starting the PC, no other applications open...I open IE and browser around for a bit the RAM FREE percentage goes from 77% down to 66%...thats 100MB of ram..so thats seams ok....BUT when I close the IE the ram free stays at 66% and does not return to 77% or near that...why is the RAM or physical memory not freed up ??

Thx In Advance
More...

With the kind of setup that you got, you should not worry too much about lacking resources, unless you run some kind of database-server farm :D

This said, if what you are doing in verifying resource allocations is looking into the Windows Task Manager, the "Explorer.exe" that you see in there has nothing to do with Internet Explorer, but with the Windows shell etc... IE is handled by the "iexplore.exe" file.

Elvis
 
Quote from Digs:

Because I close the IE and it should return memory back to where it was..should it not !!!
More...

No, it should not.

"It" may not have been the "one" that caused the memory to be "used" in the first place.

You are thinking too much about something that doesn't matter, and is not at all black and white.
 
Yes, it should free up some memory but the actual amount might be miniscule. My system (WinXP with 1/2 GB RAM) shows slightly under 200MB free before closing Explorer and 209MB free after closing it. Then back to around 198MB free after restarting it. However, I use a program called Memory Zipper which helps Windows manage RAM.

You can see what applications and processes are running and using your windows memory by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del at the same time. ONLY PRESS THEM ALL TOGETHER ONCE. (twice reboots) You will probably see many files running under "processes" that look suspicious but most are not. You can do a search for any file and see which ones are not in the windows directories and possibly identify a program that is hogging RAM. For instance, if you run WinFax Pro it likes to keep some parts of itself running and using resources unless you know where to go to turn them off until you need to use the program.

You can then see what applications and processess are running on your computer by selecting the different tabs. I suggest you make sure your anti-virus program is up to date and run an anti-spyware program like AdAware periodically, also. And, by running start/accessories/systemtools/diskdefragment about once or twice a month, your commonly used programs will run a little faster.

Wally
 
AND, what ever you do BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE!!! The easiest way to do this is to put a second physical hard drive in your computer and use the Windows Backup utility under the ASR setting (Automated System Recovery). I also turn off the Windows XP System Restore under System Properties as this is a real drain on speed. BUT, if you turn that off under XP make sure you do timely backups for sure.

Wally
 
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