From...

December 23, 1999
Web posted at: 3:58 p.m. EST (2058 GMT)

by Steve Bass

(IDG) -- Here's a stupid question: After you load a bunch of programs, does your PC crash frequently or act sluggish and out of sorts (in other words, behave like my editor)? My PC used to do that too, even with 128MB of RAM. Then I discovered the Wonderful World of Memory Tricks, and life was worth living again.

So this month I'm going to tell you about a handful of utilities--including some freebies--that will work wonders for your system.

The defrag rag

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The need for speed?

The first (and easiest) thing you can do to energize your PC is to defragment the hard drive. You're going to laugh, but I defrag my hard drive every four or five days. (I love watching the colors while defragging, especially when ignoring a deadline.) I perform this painless operation after doing maintenance chores like cleaning out crusty old .tmp and .bak files, moving around lots of data, or before installing new programs.

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Windows 9x comes with its own defragger, but one I like better is Fix-It Utilities from Ontrack (formerly Mijenix). On my 8GB drive, Fix-It's defragger runs about 40 percent faster than the one in Win 98. And that utility is just one of a dozen worthwhile tools--including a great Windows Explorer substitute called PowerDesk--that you get for only $34.

The next thing you'll want to deal with is your PC's memory, and you know what I'm going to say: Get more of it. Anything less than 32MB of RAM just isn't enough anymore, and 64MB is better still.

You see, Windows gobbles up real memory faster than a teenager wolfs pizza at an all-you-can-eat joint. When you load lots of apps, Windows runs out of RAM and uses virtual memory--a hard disk cache--to do its dirty work. (If you hear your drive churning as you load files, it's probably using virtual memory.) The more often Windows accesses the hard drive, the slower your PC will perform.

That's why you should use Cacheman to fine-tune your disk cache settings. It can adjust your settings to match the way you work--say, a bigger cache for power users, a smaller one for the rest of us. It's available free on FileWorld.

Your memory is leaking

Most days I run several apps bumper to bumper: Word, Eudora, Internet Explorer, PowerDesk, and a handful of background utilities. By midday, I've opened and closed other huge apps like Excel and Ventura Publisher. After a while, my PC looks like a data landfill, and I start running dangerously low on resources.

The problem? Some programs are dumb and won't release resources after you've closed them, which means that you have less RAM available for other apps. This is called memory leakage; a blacklist of the leakiest software is available at Radsoft's Developers Workshop.

For years, my low-tech remedy was to reboot every so often. But for the last year I've used MemTurbo, a $20 utility that automatically flushes memory taken up by DLL files no longer being used, and recovers RAM that has leaked out into the bit bucket. Just as important, the utility requires no skill or deep understanding of memory (important, in my case). After I use MemTurbo, my system perks up, I stop getting resource error messages, and I even feel a little taller.

Now, I know what you're asking yourself: Why not simply use Windows 9x's Resource Meter? Don't bother--it's a memory hog. (Isn't that ironic?) Use TClockEx instead--it takes up way less RAM. Then grab PrcView, a neat tool that'll give you detailed views of which applications are running and how much memory they're using. You can download both TClockEx and PrcView for free from FileWorld. And for a non-geekspeak tour of system resources, check out InfiniSource's TechFile.

These days, my PC almost never gives me trouble. Now if only I could do something about my cranky editor.