Hardware Decrease RAM usage.

[T.Neo]

I just got a windows popup balloon saying my virtual memory minimum is low. This was while installing microsoft VC++ compiler, and I had two instances of IE running.
may this be a hardware problem?

@Bj: Cool! Is it usable by non computer geeks?

 

[Woo482]

I think that means its trying to use you Hard Drive as RAM meaning your Page File is too low. But I am not 100% sure

 

[Bj]

I just got a windows popup balloon saying my virtual memory minimum is low. This was while installing microsoft VC++ compiler, and I had two instances of IE running.
may this be a hardware problem?

@Bj: Cool! Is it usable by non computer geeks?

It takes a little basic knowledge of a computer...

If you know what a keyboard is...
If you know what a mouse is...
If you know what a monitor is...
If you know what a CD drive is...

and more importantly...

If you know what a partition is...
If you know how to burn a disk...


Then I think your pretty much set.

Here is the version I am using...
http://www.ubuntu.com/

more specifically...
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition


On the part of your too little VM

check this out
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_fix_too_little_virtual_memory_in_windows.html

 

[cjp]

I just got a windows popup balloon saying my virtual memory minimum is low. This was while installing microsoft VC++ compiler, and I had two instances of IE running.
may this be a hardware problem?

@Bj: Cool! Is it usable by non computer geeks?

So, your virtual memory is low, while you have more than 256MB, you use WinXP, and only 2*IE and the VC++ installer?
Maybe you have other software running as well, like a virus scanner? Please check the amounts of available and used RAM in the process manager. And, who knows, maybe it is defective hardware. But I think defects in RAM will either cause the system not to accept the RAM, or to become unstable.

About Linux: you can download an Ubuntu installation disk for free. The good things are:

• You can try it first without installing, before re-partitioning your harddisk to install it. When booting it from the CD, it's very slow though.
• When you don't want to re-partition your harddisk, you can even install it on a windows drive (with a little bit loss of speed)
• The installation CD includes Memtest86!

Some people think it's usable, some don't, but I don't think this thread is the right place for an OS war. Fact is that it does have a GUI that very much resembles the windows GUI.

About disabling defective parts of the RAM in Linux: you do need to be very geeky for that feature. Read more here. Maybe there are easier ways, but I haven't looked for them yet.

 

[T.Neo]

Hmmm, I haven't had a virtual memory balloon come up at all since.
The computer seems to have accepted the RAM, and I haven't had it corrupting files or anything.

About Linux, it's something I want to get around to playing with in the future, but I don't yet know how to burn to a CD or partition a drive.

 

[cjp]

About Linux, it's something I want to get around to playing with in the future, but I don't yet know how to burn to a CD or partition a drive.

The fact that Memtest86 is on the Ubuntu disk sounds like a good reason to me to get such a CD. Even when you don't know Linux, you can use Memtest86 from the CD: "memory test" is one of the options in the very first menu you get when you boot from the CD.</shameless Linux promotion>

To get an Ubuntu CD, you either need to buy one or burn one. You wrote you don't know how to burn a CD, but it really isn't that hard. Of course you need a CD drive that can burn CDs, but I think most computers have one. Next, you need the software. Usually, when you buy a computer with a CD burner, or when you buy a CD burner, CD burning software is already shipped with it. "Nero Burning ROM" is a popular one. Using the software usually isn't very difficult, and the worst thing that can happen when you do something wrong is you've wasted a CD-R. And CD-Rs are very cheap.

Even when you don't have special CD burning software, windows XP has built-in support for burning CDs. Just inserting an empty CD-R will give a window with an option to launch the software.

When you download an Ubuntu CD, the file you download is a CD-image. You need to choose an option in the software to create a CD from an image file: simply copying the file to the CD isn't sufficient. Usually, from-image-to-CD is one of the standard wizards in the software, so it isn't really difficult. OTOH, I'm not sure whether the built-in CD-writing feature of windows XP has this feature.

 

[T.Neo]

So how big is a Linux installation? How much of my drive will it take up?

EDIT:
I'm not sure how to boot from a CD rom. This has nothing to do with Linux, but I want to format the drive of an old computer using Windows ME. I stick the ME recovery CD into the computer, and boot from the CD, but then I am presented with a command line type thing, which I have no clue with.

 

[Bj]

So how big is a Linux installation? How much of my drive will it take up?

EDIT:
I'm not sure how to boot from a CD rom. This has nothing to do with Linux, but I want to format the drive of an old computer using Windows ME. I stick the ME recovery CD into the computer, and boot from the CD, but then I am presented with a command line type thing, which I have no clue with.

This is kind of getting off topic about ram usage, but to boot from CD you have to set up the BIOS

It will look something like that.


And...

System Requirements

Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit PC and Intel based Mac architectures. At least 256 MB of RAM is required to run the alternate install CD (384MB of RAM is required to use the live CD based installer). Install requires at least 4 GB of disk space.

I found this on reformatting ME;

I have never used Win ME so I cannot say for sure,

 

[cjp]

So how big is a Linux installation? How much of my drive will it take up?

I don't know if this is going too much off-topic. Many questions are answered on the Ubuntu website, for instance:
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/index.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/installation-guide/i386/minimum-hardware-reqts.html
Note that Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution, but it is well-known for its user-friendliness, and the high probability that things 'just work' without problems. And maybe you like the idea that it is founded and sponsored by a South-African multi-millionaire.

I'm not sure how to boot from a CD rom. This has nothing to do with Linux, but I want to format the drive of an old computer using Windows ME. I stick the ME recovery CD into the computer, and boot from the CD, but then I am presented with a command line type thing, which I have no clue with.

To boot from the CD-ROM, the CD-ROM needs to be in the drive before the computer boots from the harddisk. Also, the BIOS needs to be set up to boot from the CD-ROM before booting from the harddisk, but often this is already the default.

When you boot a computer with the CD-ROM inserted, the CD-ROM starts humming, and the computer clearly boots in a different way than without the CD-ROM (e.g. you get a command prompt instead of windows), then you clearly succeeded in booting from the CD-ROM.

I'm not really sure what a windows ME disk is supposed to do. Maybe it gives you a DOS prompt.

In that case, formatting a harddisk can be done with 'format c:'. If you have multiple drives, and you don't want to format all of them, make sure you use the right drive letters. The drive letters can be different when you're booting from the CD, so you might want to check the drive contents (e.g. 'dir c:') before formatting it.

I think a windows ME bootdisk is supposed to have a setup program called 'setup.exe'. You can check that with the command 'dir'. If it's there, you can start it with 'setup.exe' or 'setup', to install windows ME.

 

[T.Neo]

And maybe you like the idea that it is founded and sponsored by a South-African multi-millionaire.

South African multi-millionare? Do you mean Mark Shuttleworth?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth

I didn't even notice that.

I do like the idea that it is founded and sponsered by a South African multi millionare, but what are other versions of Linux?

 

[cjp]

... what are other versions of Linux?

A short and a long answer (decide for yourself which one is which):

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions
• I started using Red Hat. Then I switched to SuSE (now Novell), because it had more software. Once I got fast internet, I switched to Ubuntu, because it has a huge online software repository, and because I like its non-commercial nature. I use Debian on an old server machine, which is too light-weight for Ubuntu, and I use Xubuntu (a variation on Ubuntu) on my Laptop, which used to have too little RAM for the default Ubuntu. Mandriva is the only major distribution targeted to desktop users I never tried. I'm not going to try it either, as long as I'm happy with Ubuntu.

To the moderators: I know this is way off-topic, I know we're now into the OS talk, but I don't think this belongs in the OS war thread. We are not discussing which OS / distro is better: I'm just trying to help.

To others: don't hesitate to go back to the original subject, if you have anything useful to say about that.