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Help! Computer says it's out of memory, but... (1 Viewer)

Jeffrey Noel

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I just deleted over 650 MB of mp3s off of my computer! What is going on? I checked my C: drive and it says there is 13.4 MB left. WTF?

Can you help?
 

Jeffrey Noel

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Sep 11, 2001
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Yep. Recycle bin is all empty. I even restarted the computer to see if that would help. But it didn't! :frowning:
Time to buy a new computer. This 6gig 350mhz outdated thing is pissing me off. Anyone want to buy a cheap computer? :D
 

John_Berger

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Nov 1, 2001
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Not to get rid of your excuse to get a new system ... :D
try using the Disk Cleanup under System Tools to see if it can straighten the matter out.
 

Mark Larson

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Mar 3, 2002
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What OS is it running? If you have Windows Me, reformat, install Windows 2000, repeat as necessary. :D
Seriously, Me is the worst crap ever. How much memory do you have? (RAM, as opposed to HDD space)
 

Jeffrey Noel

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Mark, I have Windows ME = more problems than good times! :frowning:
I can't reformat now. I'm doing homework and I need this hunk'a junk to work for me now!
I will more than likely reformat after tomorrow, when I'm done with college for Thanksgiving break!
 

Jeff Kleist

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13.4 MB? No wonder you're having problems. That's just not enough elbow room.

You need to clean out at least 2-300MB
 

Mark Larson

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Mar 3, 2002
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OK... you need to clarify whether its actually memory or hard drive space you're running out of.
Windows doesn't create a huge-ass swap most of the time, and mine is just 239MB right now, and i have 512MB RAM.
If you're running out of memory you'll need to upgrade your RAM, if you're running out of disk space you'll either have to upgrade your drive or burn stuff to CD.
 

Jeffrey Noel

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Just don't reinstall Moron Edition.
Don't worry, not going to happen!
Mark, it's my hard drive space that I have nothing of. I am going to reformat this darned thing tomorrow, but I will transfer all of my stuff over to my roommate's computer. My freakin' CD-RW drive went psycho on me about a week ago. It won't even open. Sometimes my computer doesn't even recognize that I have a CD drive. I now believe that my computer is on its last breath, but maybe the hard drive format will give it a fresh breath. I hope so, because I really don't feel like charging a new computer. Oh well, that's life. :)
BTW, my computer has 256MB RAM.
 

Masood Ali

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Jan 31, 2002
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Set your swapfile to a constant size; 384MB.

Also, make sure there isn't any System Restore (or Backup) feature turned on.
 

jeff peterson

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Nov 29, 1998
Messages
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I was having similar problems on my Pentium II 350 Mhz PC running Win 95. It stopped recognizing the CDRW drive sometimes, freeze ups, etc.

I did 3 things and have been running like a champ ever since. I reformatted my hard drive, installed Win98, and (I think this part really made a difference) unplugged every cable/card, cleaned the contacts with contact cleaner and firmly reseated them. I think things loosen up over the years.

I've been running without freezeups, CDRW works great, and I get to use my USB ports that my PC already had but Win95 didn't handle.
 

Kevin P

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Jan 18, 1999
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Some suggestions:
  1. Clear your browser cache (temporary internet files)
  2. Empty your C:WindowsTemp folder.
  3. Run a Scandisk. Perhaps your free space is getting lost due to FAT corruption.
  4. Run a virus scan with an up to date scanner.
  5. Check how much space each folder on your drive is taking up. If one is unusually large, check it out and see what it is, and clean it out if possible.
  6. Go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall anything you aren't using anymore.
If all else fails, reformat and reinstall, after backing up your important stuff of course.
KJP
 

AjayM

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Aug 22, 2000
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Set your swapfile to a constant size; 384MB.
Set your swap size to double your memory if you have the space (and if you don't have the space, upgrade your hard drive), and as mentioned set it to a constant size.

A few other places to make some HD room is your internet explorer temporary files, I believe default is something like 10% of your hard disk for temp files. Just go into internet explorer and delete them (this can take awhile). Also you can delete any of the folders windows created while doing updates (typically the folder will say something like "Windows update setup files"). If you see an i386 directory, you can delete it...as it's just the setup files for the OS, so make sure you have the CD handy in case you need to install some hardware.

Andrew
 

Charles J P

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if you deleted all those mp3s, do a find file for *.mp3 and make sure the only MP3s on your computer are the ones you itended to leave. Dont delete any MP3s that go with games or anything though. Just make sure you didnt accidentally copy them to somewhere else instead of deleting them.
Also, on a side note regarding the swap file... I have 1GB of ram in my WinXP machine, so that means I can either let Windows manage my swap file which means it will change in size and fragment faster, or I can set it, but it will need to be 2GB :eek:. I need to run Partition Magic and steal some hard drive space from my second partition anyway.
 

AjayM

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I have 1GB of ram in my WinXP machine, so that means I can either let Windows manage my swap file which means it will change in size and fragment faster, or I can set it, but it will need to be 2GB . I need to run Partition Magic and steal some hard drive space from my second partition anyway.
Don't let Windows manage it, as you said it will change in size at times and your drive will need to be defraged more often, there is also overhead as Windows figures out it needs to be bigger/smaller, etc. However with 1GB of memory you probably don't need to set the swap at double the memory (you can probably get away with just a 1GB swap, or maybe 1.5GB), unless you are using your machine to run a lot of applications or a few big applications. The swap file is there for Windows to put select pieces of applications and the OS into so it can free up regular memory, if you go into the task manager and take a peek at how much available physical memory you have you can kind of gauge this. But more is better if you can spare it, for instance I have a Citrix server here with 2GB of memory in it, with a 4 and change GB swap file I have almost 1GB of physical memory free with a few people on the machine.

Lastly, you can set the swap file onto a different drive if you want, and is sometimes recommended. For instance I have servers here where the primary drives (just the OS for the most part) are set in a RAID 1 (mirroring) configuration, and all the data drives are setup in a faster RAID configuration, so I moved the swap file to those drives as access and read times are much faster.

Andrew
 

Neil Joseph

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Question: (I hope not too off topic) but by downloading MP3's from these sites like Napster and such, do they use a backdoor to use some of your computer's resources without your knowledge?
 

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