Windows Vista RAM

ricriley

Hi,

I've just recieved my shiny new pc from Dell. It's a:
Intel Quad Core Duo
2GB RAM
500GB HD
runnign Windows Vista Home Premium
Yada yada.

But when I start my machine and I look at the "Task Manager" it shows that my physical memory is:
Total: 2045
Cached: 1520
Free: 0!!!

Do I need more RAM? because surely there should be more than 0 free MB in the physical memory. Though 2GB is hardly peanuts.

All I have installed seperate from the dell installation is Norton Antivirus.

Any ideas?


Thanks
Ric

robt_2

Ignore that.

What is your 'physical memory usage' which is at the bottom on the task manager window?

2Gb is more than enough

Conor_3

It's working fine.3MB is being used by the onboard graphics and a lot of the rest is being used by the Superfetch service which will be released as and when needed.

ricriley

Thanks,

My physical memory usage is 40%.

I tend to get a lot of "hard-drive thrashing"when the computer isn't doing very much, is this normal with vista?

In the future I intend on using most of the Adobe software such as Photoshop, will I need more RAM for that, or will it be fine?

TonyLisaP

Hard Drive thrashing isn't normal. Is it a RAID configuration?

robt_2

TonyLisaP wrote: »

Hard Drive thrashing isn't normal. Is it a RAID configuration?

Possibly still building the index as the op mentioned when the pc 'isn't doing much'.

TonyLisaP

The index on a new PC shouldn't be anything much. I have never had any sort of thrashing with Vista and I must rebuild my machine more than most. I would suggest that the OP leave the performance monitor running for a while to see what is happening.
Goto start, run and type in perfmon and hit ok. When the performance monitor opens up there are four windows. CPU, DISK, NETWORK and Memory. Click on the down arrow on the disk and it will index everything the HDD is doing.

TonyLisaP

I would be interested in your index score as well. Goto start, settings, control panel, system and tell me what it says your rating is. It will be something like 5.1 then click on the rating and it will give you a breakdown of each item in the rating.
Thanks

ricriley

My HD is thrashing even when idle.

In the task manager process window my CPU isn't being used for anything else other than taskmgr.exe

How do I find out if I'm using is RAID configuration?

My system rating is 3.8
Here's the ratings for everything else:
Processor: 5.9
RAM: 5.5
Graphics: 3.8
Gaming graphics:3.9
Primary HD: 5.7


Thanks
Ric

amcluesent

Vista will use all memory for caches etc. so 0Mb free is 'normal' (Vista will release the RAM as soon as a program needs it).

>All I have installed seperate from the dell installation is Norton Antivirus<

Friends don't let friends install Norton £10 says that what's chuffing-up your PC.

ricriley

Sorry I think I've found the cause of the problem.

The "Disk Defragment" tool, had be set for regular defragmentation.

So my computer has stopped making the nasty HD reading and writing sound.

On some of other forums I have seen that the "Windows Search" should be turned off. How do I do this?