[gui-talk] memory issue

[Mike Freeman]

Ken:

You're still using dial-up? NO wonder you had streaming problems on Friday! 
Although there are streams for dial-up, the streams one normally encounters 
on radio station sites require broadband. But that't not the issue here.

Frankly, without far more information, most of which would have to be 
gathered by a software package installed on your machine and, perhaps, run 
in Safe Mode such that Window-eyes wouldn't work, we can't give you a 
definitive answer. However, I can make the following observations. Bear in 
mind that, to some extent, these are just my opinions.

(1) There's a reason AOL has lost a slew of subscribers. I suspect that 
something in the AOL software is causing the disk activity you notice. While 
annoying, I'm not sure you need be as worried about your hard drive as you 
seem to be. I'm using a computer I bought in November, 2003, and while I've 
had it reloaded a couple of times (once because of a virus I caught because 
I got overly-curious), the hard drive is still going strong. In any event, 
the AOL software may be doing tasks -- keeping track of your activity, 
downloading new content or even versions of itself -- that occur in the 
background and of which you are unaware.

(2) There's a dirty little secret most people don't seem to know: Windows 
itself seems to have some memory leaks or, if nothing else, has some 
problems with disk optimization -- at least XP does and I am sure Vista does 
also. Too soon to know about Windows 7. Most people find that after a year 
or two, to get the performance they once had, they have to completely reload 
their system. Thus the need for a backup of the system with a clean copy of 
Windows and all the software (including Window-eyes) on it *just* after all 
of it has been reloaded and customized. In this case, hind-sight is 20/20 
but there it is. Industry and consumers never seem to have held Microsoft to 
the same standards as they once held operating systems (I have a workstation 
at work running Vax/VMS that has been up -- without reboot -- for over a 
year! Put that in your PC pipe and smoke it!) WE as a society have gotten 
tolerant of sloppy programming. And although adherents of other systems such 
as Mac OS or LINUXZ will trumpet the virtues of their operating systems (and 
they are many), they, too, have their problems. In my opinion, almost *all* 
computer programs written in languages higher than assembly-language are 
inordinately inefficient and we as a society ohve decided that it's cheaper 
to throw hardware (increased processor power and multiple processors) at 
computer slowdowns than to step back and rewrite the code more efficiently. 
This offends my sense of computer order! (grin)

Bottom line: to truly figure out what's going down, you might have to take 
your machine to the Geek Squad or similar outfit you trust and have them 
observe it for a while. But you may also find that with dial-up, your asking 
your computer to do more than it was designed for given today's streaming 
speeds and the like. I know I'm just barely on the edge with this machine --  
it keeps up but the processor is being worked close to its max.

HTH!

Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Kenlawrence124 at aol.com>
To: <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 8:11 AM
Subject: [gui-talk] memory issue


> Hi list members, Ken here with a problem I can't nail down.  When I  log 
> on
> to AOL after about five minutes or so after signing on I feel the drive
> spinning and spinning like it's trying to find something or do something.
> There are no other programs running other then a screen reader and AOL, 
> and In
> addition to this slowdown I'm getting a Windows vertual memory too low we
> are  increasing the size of your paging file, During the process some 
> memory
> requests  maybe denyedWhat is chewing up my vertual memory Microsoft
> security essentials  andMalwarebytes scanns come back clean.  This problem 
> seems
> to go away  after the computer has been on for a while.  What is the cause 
> of
> this and  why is making my harddrive work so hard.  I'm worried if I con't
> fix this  my drive may meet an early deth.  Does a dial up modem do this?
> Also  I can't seem to account for a lost free space on tis drive.  I have 
> 68
> Plus  Gigabites with Window-eyes in here, Now that's gone, and My space is
> down to  65.73 Gigabites.  I have downloaded antivirus, the Malwarebytes, 
> and
> both  the Realspeak Emely and the real speak Jennifer for Jaws.  I have
> reinstalled an updated thunder and Firefox.  All the songs I had 
> downloaded
> are on CD accept the two on the machine at the moment, so I can account 
> for
> the  amount of space these things take and it's not 3 gigs.  Any idea 
> whaere
> my  space is gone and how I can using a screen reader find out what is
> causing  this?  Also the Microsoft and Adobe flash player updated wouldn't
> account  for this lost free space.  I've had the machine for about a year 
> now.
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