3 data related questions. unrelated file in use, RAM, pagefile
 

On 13/04/2016 11:20 AM, Micky wrote:
3 data related questions.

I'm using Vista but it's a lot like w7, and these questions apply to
XP too, I think.

1) Coming out of Windows sleep or maybe FFox crashing, I'm looking at
Win Resource Monitor, Disk, and I see about 500,000,000 Bytes/minute
being read from C:\downloads\xp-downloads\COL18341.exe which has
nothing to do with anything. It's some sort of Photosmart Premier 7.5
for HP that I downloaded for some reason 3 years ago. I've never run
it. I don't know how long the transfer lasted but it was showing in
the Monitor window least 20 seconds. The program never started or
anything and after it was gone from the Monitor window, I saw no trace
of it. What the heck was happening and why? Why this file?

Sounds like an anti-virus scan to me. I used to see my AV scanning some
weird irrelevant files at random times when I was least expecting it.
Usually it was scanning some files in my Thunderbird directories. I got
rid of the problem by putting an exclusion in the AV setup for those
folders.

2) Even when I'm only using 80% of my RAM, I think I still see a lot
of reading or writing the pagefile. Not in volume of data maybe but
from more than one program, right now, explorer, lsass, firefox,
system, avgsnx, eudora, all reading from pagefile at the same time,
with 83% of RAM in use. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes perfect sense, at 83% usage, you're probably actually over
100% usage, and programs are having to store or retrieve their data from
the pagefile. It's pegged at 83% simply because some of that RAM space
needs to be used as disk cache, and so is not available to programs to
use. As disk cache, you're still actually using that "free space".

If you look under Resource Monitor, under the Memory tab, you'll see a
horizontal stacked bar graph with 5 categories represented: Hardware
Reserved, In Use (this what the programs use), Modified (this is also
the programs), Standby (this is the disk cache), and Free (actually
unused RAM). In my case, I have 16GB of RAM, and it's shown as only 32%
in use: the vast majority is being shown as Standby (9361 MB), while
actually Free is only 1697 MB.

If you want to know which programs are using the pagefile the most, then
sort your memory list by Hard Faults/sec, that tells you which programs
are looking for a particular piece of data in RAM and finding it's not
there, and having to go to the disk to retrieve it instead.

3) Anyhow, the computer is functioning well almost all the time, but I
see a lot of reading and writing that pagefile If I had two more
gigs of RAM, 4 gigs total, and was running the same number of programs
and the same OS, would I expect to see no use of the pagefile?

You won't see no use of the pagefile, as even just the act of loading a
program for the first time shows up as a hard fault. But it will reduce
your hard faults quite a bit. Actually these days even 4GB is not even
enough for the programs these days. You actually need a mimimum of 6GB
to have a comfortable system, but in that case you also need the 64-bit
version of your OS.

Yousuf Khan

3 data related questions. unrelated file in use, RAM, pagefile
 

Great post. Thank you. I'll try answer in more detail later, esp. if
manage to check out the meters you mention.

[Default] On Wed, 20 Apr 2016 09:46:41 -0400, in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 13/04/2016 11:20 AM, Micky wrote:
3 data related questions.

I'm using Vista but it's a lot like w7, and these questions apply to
XP too, I think.

1) Coming out of Windows sleep or maybe FFox crashing, I'm looking at
Win Resource Monitor, Disk, and I see about 500,000,000 Bytes/minute
being read from C:\downloads\xp-downloads\COL18341.exe which has
nothing to do with anything. It's some sort of Photosmart Premier 7.5
for HP that I downloaded for some reason 3 years ago. I've never run
it. I don't know how long the transfer lasted but it was showing in
the Monitor window least 20 seconds. The program never started or
anything and after it was gone from the Monitor window, I saw no trace
of it. What the heck was happening and why? Why this file?

Sounds like an anti-virus scan to me. I used to see my AV scanning some
weird irrelevant files at random times when I was least expecting it.
Usually it was scanning some files in my Thunderbird directories. I got
rid of the problem by putting an exclusion in the AV setup for those
folders.

2) Even when I'm only using 80% of my RAM, I think I still see a lot
of reading or writing the pagefile. Not in volume of data maybe but
from more than one program, right now, explorer, lsass, firefox,
system, avgsnx, eudora, all reading from pagefile at the same time,
with 83% of RAM in use. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes perfect sense, at 83% usage, you're probably actually over
100% usage, and programs are having to store or retrieve their data from
the pagefile. It's pegged at 83% simply because some of that RAM space
needs to be used as disk cache, and so is not available to programs to
use. As disk cache, you're still actually using that "free space".

If you look under Resource Monitor, under the Memory tab, you'll see a
horizontal stacked bar graph with 5 categories represented: Hardware
Reserved, In Use (this what the programs use), Modified (this is also
the programs), Standby (this is the disk cache), and Free (actually
unused RAM). In my case, I have 16GB of RAM, and it's shown as only 32%
in use: the vast majority is being shown as Standby (9361 MB), while
actually Free is only 1697 MB.

If you want to know which programs are using the pagefile the most, then
sort your memory list by Hard Faults/sec, that tells you which programs
are looking for a particular piece of data in RAM and finding it's not
there, and having to go to the disk to retrieve it instead.

3) Anyhow, the computer is functioning well almost all the time, but I
see a lot of reading and writing that pagefile If I had two more
gigs of RAM, 4 gigs total, and was running the same number of programs
and the same OS, would I expect to see no use of the pagefile?

You won't see no use of the pagefile, as even just the act of loading a
program for the first time shows up as a hard fault. But it will reduce
your hard faults quite a bit. Actually these days even 4GB is not even
enough for the programs these days. You actually need a mimimum of 6GB
to have a comfortable system, but in that case you also need the 64-bit
version of your OS.

Yousuf Khan