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LAST EDITED ON Aug-07-02 AT 10:50 PM (EDT)

My Uncle says that the reason my PC gets really slow after a few hours of continous use is because a lot of programs have bugs which cause them to unload properly and hog a lot of memory down the drain. Is there anyway I can fix that problem besides rebooting the PC?Adam-------------------------------
Submit your ideas for future versions of Microsoft Train Simulator at http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/TrainSimulator/Feedback/ Make sure you name the subject of your e-mail as Train Simulator Insider -- Feedback Page which is what's in the subject line if Outlook Express opens on your PC when you click on the address link on the website address above. Please DON'T suggest to Microsoft to put a form to submit our ideas for future versions of MSTS on the website address above because then we can't format our ideas to our preference/s.
I'm a...- HUGE Real Life Train Fan
- HUGE Fan of NASCAR Winston Cup Series Racingand...- My first career goal is to be a employee aboard a train for a U.S.A. Freight RailRoad.

My e-mail address is railroader88@hotmail.com Feel free to e-mail me for any reason! Thanks, your help is appreciated!
-------------------------------

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PC Problem [View All], I_totally_love_trains, 10:50 PM, Aug-07-02, (0) RE: PC Problem, dvdhoven, Aug-08-02, 00:33 AM, (1) RE: PC Problem, LordTauk, Aug-08-02, 01:14 AM, (2) RE: PC Problem, kazba, Aug-08-02, 01:30 AM, (3) RE: PC Problem, derekmorton, Aug-08-02, 01:47 AM, (4) RE: PC Problem, dgauci, Aug-08-02, 10:09 AM, (5) RE: PC Problem, pstraten, Aug-08-02, 10:28 AM, (6) RE: PC Problem, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-08-02, 05:08 PM, (7) RE: PC Problem, dgauci, Aug-09-02, 00:29 AM, (11) RE: PC Problem, quaia, Aug-09-02, 07:54 AM, (14) RE: PC Problem, dgauci, Aug-09-02, 12:44 PM, (16) RE: PC Problem, FatController, Aug-09-02, 11:15 AM, (15) RE: PC Problem, derekmorton, Aug-08-02, 05:47 PM, (8) RE: PC Problem, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-08-02, 07:37 PM, (9) RE: PC Problem, rpicardi1, Aug-08-02, 10:09 PM, (10) RE: PC Problem, dgauci, Aug-09-02, 00:36 AM, (12) RE: PC Problem, derekmorton, Aug-09-02, 00:44 AM, (13) RE: PC Problem, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-09-02, 04:50 PM, (17) RE: PC Problem, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-09-02, 06:56 PM, (18) RE: PC Problem, dgauci, Aug-09-02, 07:02 PM, (20) RE: PC Problem, dgauci, Aug-09-02, 07:00 PM, (19) RE: PC Problem, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-09-02, 09:59 PM, (21)

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Hi,You can try to use a memory monitoring program. I use Cacheman from www.outertech.com For personal use it's free. I resides in the System Tray and from time to time I do a right-click on the icon and choose "Recover memory now". There are lot more of these programs, look at www.download.com Dick van den Hoven

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Dont overlook the possibility that maybe you're computer is getting hot so you'll notice it slowing down, I mean being on for a long time and playing games and doing a lot of calculations and what not...Just something to think about if all else fails.

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Adam, Your uncle is partially right. When you exit a program, sometimes that program will leave small pieces of itself in memory. When next program loads, it can't use that memory area because the system still sees it as being used.
The biggest culprit of system slow down besides heat issues is simply very poor memory management by a program. I've seen and beta tested enough programs that would forget to deallocate memory after they're done with it. The worst I've seen was one program, I think it was some sort of database program, would allocate 256k to do something and then when it was done it would return 160K back to the memory pool, leaving the remaining 96K as used. Talk about watching your available memory disappear. Turned out it was a bug in the database code. Downloaded a couple of patches and most of the problem was solved. I think it was still failing to return about 2k back to the pool. In the end, we went to another database program.
Bottom line is that in order to get that memory back you're going to have to reboot. Sometimes, and I stress 'sometimes', depending on your OS, you may be able to logout and log back in again, but that doesn't always work.Hope this helps.
Matt

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Adam,2 things come to mind here:-1. You are running win9x and you are running out of resources.
2. You do have a memory leak as outlined by another.I can run TS for a week so I don't think that the standard TS has a leak. I am running win2k SP2.I would suggest looking at an operating system upgrade if it is really bugging you.Derek

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>My Uncle says that the reason my PC gets really slow after a
>few hours of continous use is because a lot of programs have
>bugs which cause them to unload properly and hog a lot of
>memory down the drain. Is there anyway I can fix that
>problem besides rebooting the PC?
>
>Adam As Derek Morton has already pointed out this is a well known problem with Win9.X. The solution is simply upgrade your system to either Windows 2000 or Windows XP and the problem disappears forever. Their are many Microsoft Knowledge Base articles on this topic and the way that Windows 9.X handles resources and the problems that creep in.

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"The solution is simply upgrade your system to either Windows 2000 or Windows XP and the problem disappears forever."dgauci--That certainly may be THE solution, but a rather impractical one for a young man with few monetary resources. More realistic for him to download a free memory manager like FreeMem, which he can get at just about any download site.PaulS

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I'd prefer a new OS over a free program that has spyware in it but Windows XP I don't like. For one, DirectX 8.0 won't work with my three year old hardware, and two, I don't like Internet Explorer 6.0 because it won't let you save sound files downloaded off of a link on a website to your hard disk, if you want them saved you have to go into your Temporary Internet Files folder and find the file. My Dad doesn't plan on buying a new PC soon so I'm in pretty bad luck for now.Adam-------------------------------
Submit your ideas for future versions of Microsoft Train Simulator at http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/TrainSimulator/Feedback/ Make sure you name the subject of your e-mail as Train Simulator Insider -- Feedback Page which is what's in the subject line if Outlook Express opens on your PC when you click on the address link on the website address above. Please DON'T suggest to Microsoft to put a form to submit our ideas for future versions of MSTS on the website address above because then we can't format our ideas to our preference/s.
I'm a...- HUGE Real Life Train Fan
- HUGE Fan of NASCAR Winston Cup Series Racingand...- My first career goal is to be a employee aboard a train for a U.S.A. Freight RailRoad.

My e-mail address is railroader88@hotmail.com Feel free to e-mail me for any reason! Thanks, your help is appreciated!
-------------------------------

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>I'd prefer a new OS over a free program that has spyware in
>it but Windows XP I don't like. For one, DirectX 8.0 won't
>work with my three year old hardware, and two, I don't like
>Internet Explorer 6.0I would recommend Windows XP Home as the most cost efficient way. WinXP comes with DirectX 8.1. As for it not working with your three year old hardware what are you using? My current Windows XP Pro system will be three years old this October, I haven't had any problems running DirectX 8 on it either now or when I was running Win98 SE on it. I've used IE 6.0 since it's release on every system I have. I haven't run into the specific issue concerning music links you list so I can't fairly comment on it.

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So your answer is:Windows 2000 Professionalyou can then freely download from Microsoft DirectX 8.1b, Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, and Internet Explorer 5.5 Servoce Pack 2 with Internet Tools.Memory requirements are lower than Windows XP Home, so if you have at least 196 MB you should play with MSTS without problems.Umberto

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-09-02 AT 12:45 PM (EDT)

>
>So your answer is:
>
>Windows 2000 Professional
>
>Memory requirements are lower than Windows XP Home, so if
>you have at least 196 MB you should play with MSTS without
>problems. The memory requirements for Windows XP and Windows 2000 are exactly the same, usable minimum 128Mb -- sweet spot 256Mb or more. (Microsoft states on their respective web pages that both Windows 2000 and Windows XP will run with 64Mb, but both with reduced functionality and not recommended.)

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I would still heartily recommend XP. A staggeringly good product from Mr Gates. I still haven't got over it.FatController

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Paul,>That certainly may be THE solution, but a rather impractical one for >a young man with few monetary resources. More realistic for him to >download a free memory manager like FreeMem, which he can get at >just about any download site.You don't seem to understand the problem, a memory manager does not reclaim leaked memory, it only moves resident programs from ram to disk therefore freeing up ram, and actually makes things worse.Derek

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Thanks for letting me know that Derek, I appreciate a correct answer.
Once I choose to shutdown sometimes everything disappears but my background and it locks up then. Can anyone explain that? I just shut off my PC then and when I boot up next time I let scandisk run. I think if you don't let scandisk run in them conditions it screws up a lot of stuff.
Adam-------------------------------
Submit your ideas for future versions of Microsoft Train Simulator at http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/TrainSimulator/Feedback/ Make sure you name the subject of your e-mail as Train Simulator Insider -- Feedback Page which is what's in the subject line if Outlook Express opens on your PC when you click on the address link on the website address above. Please DON'T suggest to Microsoft to put a form to submit our ideas for future versions of MSTS on the website address above because then we can't format our ideas to our preference/s.
I'm a...- HUGE Real Life Train Fan
- HUGE Fan of NASCAR Winston Cup Series Racingand...- My first career goal is to be a employee aboard a train for a U.S.A. Freight RailRoad.

My e-mail address is railroader88@hotmail.com Feel free to e-mail me for any reason! Thanks, your help is appreciated!
-------------------------------

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There is another possibility, spyware or some worm is slowly tying up resources until after an hour, the computer gets real slow. (System Monitor showed 100% CPU usage when it happened.)That nasty bug got by Nortons and Zoan Alarm Pro and was buried in an attachment in an attachment on one of those pass it to everyone e-mail jokes.I ended up doing a complete format hard drive, reinstall everything, in order to fix that problem. Haven't had any slowdown problems since.SRV Ron

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>Once I choose to shutdown sometimes everything disappears
>but my background and it locks up then. Can anyone explain
>that? I just shut off my PC then and when I boot up next
>time I let scandisk run. I think if you don't let scandisk
>run in them conditions it screws up a lot of stuff.
Just generic Windows 9.x memory and resource issues. At work the vast majority of our users are all running Win 98 boxes and these issues are a very common daily occurence. I liked Windows 98 SE when that was all I had, but I like Windows 2000 and Windows XP much better because I prefer a rock stable system.

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Adam,>Once I choose to shutdown sometimes everything disappears but my
>background and it locks up then. Can anyone explain that? I just shut
>off my PC then and when I boot up next time I let scandisk run. I
>think if you don't let scandisk run in them conditions it screws up a >lot of stuff.Try hitting <ctrl> <alt> <del> and getting the task list up, end task everything except explorer and systray, then shutdown.Tell us what you had to end task?Derek

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-09-02 AT 05:04 PM (EDT)

It's possible I have a worm but I do have ad-aware that finds spyware and deletes it (Get it at download.com for free). There's even spyware in the retail version of Microsoft Internet Explorer and in some pop-up ads on the internet! I called DELL about this problem, they came and checked it out and they said it's just memory and Windows 9x, I'll try to get my Dad to get us a new PC.
Meanwhile I got another problem. When I first installed IE 6.0 off of the internet I didn't like it so I went back to IE 5.5 but it still opens another window like IE 6.0 would. Sometimes it just shows a little bit of the taskbar with the minimize, restore, and close buttons and sometimes it opens like it should with a restored size browser window. Any help?Also for all you Windows XP users, I highly doubt MS Internet Explorer 6.5 will be for free in the XP design on the internet so how do you all upgrade to keep your cool design the same. Do you just buy the new OS to get that?One more question.My friend in school says that he has a computer made by 'Crack' and the support people will come to his house any hour of the day, day or night. Is that true? A lot of the people at my school blab their mouths so I'd like some verification on this.Thanks in advance!Adam-------------------------------
Submit your ideas for future versions of Microsoft Train Simulator at http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/TrainSimulator/Feedback/ Make sure you name the subject of your e-mail as Train Simulator Insider -- Feedback Page which is what's in the subject line if Outlook Express opens on your PC when you click on the address link on the website address above. Please DON'T suggest to Microsoft to put a form to submit our ideas for future versions of MSTS on the website address above because then we can't format our ideas to our preference/s.
I'm a...- HUGE Real Life Train Fan
- HUGE Fan of NASCAR Winston Cup Series Racingand...- My first career goal is to be a employee aboard a train for a U.S.A. Freight RailRoad.

My e-mail address is railroader88@hotmail.com Feel free to e-mail me for any reason! Thanks, your help is appreciated!
-------------------------------

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And what are them two programs that you can download called InternetBOOST and InternetALERT for? They had ads on a website that look like real error boxes and MSN.com had a ad about InternetALERT one time. I think alls they are is a special way for other people to get into your PC, at least the InternetBOOST but maybe all of you know different.I know you can't boost your Internet Connection higher than it goes and download accelerator programs are definately a scam!Adam-------------------------------
Submit your ideas for future versions of Microsoft Train Simulator at http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/TrainSimulator/Feedback/ Make sure you name the subject of your e-mail as Train Simulator Insider -- Feedback Page which is what's in the subject line if Outlook Express opens on your PC when you click on the address link on the website address above. Please DON'T suggest to Microsoft to put a form to submit our ideas for future versions of MSTS on the website address above because then we can't format our ideas to our preference/s.
I'm a...- HUGE Real Life Train Fan
- HUGE Fan of NASCAR Winston Cup Series Racingand...- My first career goal is to be a employee aboard a train for a U.S.A. Freight RailRoad.

My e-mail address is railroader88@hotmail.com Feel free to e-mail me for any reason! Thanks, your help is appreciated!
-------------------------------

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>And what are them two programs that you can download called
>InternetBOOST and InternetALERT for? More creative third party ways to seperate you from your money in some way.

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>I called DELL about this problem, they came and
>checked it out and they said it's just memory and Windows
>9x, I'll try to get my Dad to get us a new PC. Which is what we have been telling you all along. If you have a Dell PIII system that was manufactured since Fall 1999, it would be cheaper to spend $90 on an upgrade to Windows XP Home rather then buy an entire new system. That's your call.>Also for all you Windows XP users, I highly doubt MS
>Internet Explorer 6.5 will be for free in the XP design on
>the internet so how do you all upgrade to keep your cool
>design the same. Do you just buy the new OS to get that? I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. There is no IE 6.5 yet and if one is released I have no doubt it will continue to be a free download as has been every other IE release. Are you by chance making a reference to the Luna UI included with Windows XP?I also use the registered version of AdAware and have never found an instance of spyware as a component of Internet Explorer 6 so I'm really not sure where you got this from. Also if you are actively using any current Anti-Virus software, worms shouldn't be an issue.>My friend in school says that he has a computer made by
>'Crack' and the support people will come to his house any
>hour of the day, day or night. Is that true? A lot of the
>people at my school blab their mouths so I'd like some
>verification on this. That sounds like wishfull thinking and BS to me.

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-09-02 AT 10:40 PM (EDT)

I found spyware in IE 5.5. I'm running McAfee VirusScan.I know there's no IE 6.5 yet but I'm just wondering with this new 3D design if you'll be able to download IE 6.5 in a 3D version for free on the internet. I've saw already that some options in IE 6.0 have become kind of 3D.
I also posted the text below on the MSN MSTS Fan Site:do like Windows XP because programs aren't supposed to hog memory with that OS.I also don't like it because I hate Internet Explorer 6.0 because when you download sound files right from a website it doesn't let you save them to a disk and you have to play them and if you want to save them you have to go into your temporary internet files and find the file.
I still won't be getting XP for a while though even though the cool 3D design does tempt me to. I need a all new PC altogether but right now my Dad can't afford to get us a new one. There's too many other things that are more important right now and plus my Dad knows hardly anything about computers so he thinks there's nothing wrong with are 3 year old PC!I am still quite mad at DELL though for losing their 24x7 lifetime tech support service that you can buy when you purchase your PC, they traded it in for that stupid new CompleteCare deal that hardly anyone needs. My Dad is probably keeping are current PC too because we still got that tech support service on this old PC, but the monitor is starting to go bad in it too already. DELL still has the best rating overall though and the best warranty options out of all PC Manufacturers right now and you can get anything in a DELL that you could in any other PC.I can't even believe MS didn't even build a nice background for the Windows XP startup screen, they could've used that cloudy background with the grassy hill and that'd look real nice.
--------------------------------------
I also got another problem. Every few weeks my PC works fine and then for week it doesn't and so on. The problem is after I press cancel in the password entry box the taskbar loads with the virusshield icon, clock, desktop icons, and plain background color but not my cool wallpaper and then everything locks up causing me to restart the computer incorrectly. What causes this? DELL told me it's too many programs trying to load at once but they didn't let me know what I can do to make the problem disappear.Adam-------------------------------
Submit your ideas for future versions of Microsoft Train Simulator at http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/TrainSimulator/Feedback/ Make sure you name the subject of your e-mail as Train Simulator Insider -- Feedback Page which is what's in the subject line if Outlook Express opens on your PC when you click on the address link on the website address above. Please DON'T suggest to Microsoft to put a form to submit our ideas for future versions of MSTS on the website address above because then we can't format our ideas to our preference/s.
I'm a...- HUGE Real Life Train Fan
- HUGE Fan of NASCAR Winston Cup Series Racingand...- My first career goal is to be a employee aboard a train for a U.S.A. Freight RailRoad.

My e-mail address is railroader88@hotmail.com Feel free to e-mail me for any reason! Thanks, your help is appreciated!
-------------------------------

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