Freeing up RAM in Vista?

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
I've got 2GB RAM installed in my machine. That was more than enough in XP. In Vista? Well, it's still enough, but Vista sure does like to hog resources.

What are some of the easiest ways I can free up RAM in Vista?
 
You can disable the thing that makes the screens minimize all pretty like.

Its called DWM. Get rid of that and you'll see a difference.

There are a few others too.
 
actually you don't need to do that..leave vista alone..vista is much more aggressive in using ram for caching(ala Linux) than xp was. as long as you don't have crapware installed everything's fine. It does have a ton of stuff going on but it's all pretty much tied together. You'll actually hurt htings int he long run instead of helping. Killing uac and turning off aero are the two biggest things you can do to improve performance in vista.
 
Aero = DWM right?

My first laptop came with 1 gig of memory and Vista (bad bad bad thing) so I gave it to him and we took it from using 600 megs on start up to 300. It involved cutting down on services and killing programs from starting at start up.
 
you CAN do that..but it's not really a good idea with vista to do that. If it works for you great..it's not something i would advise due to vista's design.
 
Hescominsoon said:
Killing uac
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Okay, I turned off UAC and disabled Windows security alerts.

Hescominsoon said:
and turning off aero are the two biggest things you can do to improve performance in vista.
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Though I hate to admit it, I've grown to like the shininess of Aero. When I disabled it, the machine went from 46% RAM usage to 44%. Then again, I didn't reboot the system, so maybe I'm not seeing the full impact of disabling Aero.

Is there something I'm missing, or does Aero not take up that much RAM?
 
A suggestion that does work Tek, I have used Vista since Release and I also have 2GB of Ram, but I use Ready Boost, in short Ready Boost is Ram on a USB but not every USB stick can be used, it must be a Ready Boost Drive certified, this takes all normal tasks that Vista stores in Ram on startup and Free's up your Ram sticks, recomennded is 3 times the normal Ram [2 gb Ram = 6 GB Ready Boost], stopping Aero and reducing your settings will help your Performance but will Impact your Ram little :)
 
I am from the FUTURE!!!

HCS will offer Tek a copy of Windows 7 beta and something else starting with an R.

And I will say it ends in August.

Then he will say he speculates it to end sometime in September-November later this year!
 
no..the rc ends in august..i am anticipating windows 7 FINAL to shop in sept-nov timeframe. frankly right now windows 7 could ship now.
 
Oy, it looks like we lost a few posts last night, but not many.

I'll reiterate my concerns: I don't want to have to shell out big dollars for Windows 7 when it releases and I don't want to hassle with upgrading or, worse yet, wiping and reloading my OS, so I'm planning to stick with Vista for now.

Even if I were to run the Windows 7 beta or RC, I'd have to either (a) pay for the full version of Windows 7 (and probably the Pro or Ultimate or whatever high-end version comes out, since I have licenses for Windows XP Pro and Vista Ultimate) or (b) downgrade back to Vista.

I don't have a few hundred dollars to drop on an OS right now, especially when I have a license for Vista Ultimate that came with my new (replacement) notebook.
 
Then keep Vista.

I know (because I was one of them) that everyone complains about how much memory Vista uses and how slow it can make your computer, etc etc...

It sounds to me that your computer is beefy enough to handle Vista.

Once you get used to it, it really isn't that bad.
 
If you plan on keeping vista, either Buy more Ram which is Decreasing in Price, Even DDR 3 or Start using Ready Boost, or Both. I run 2 GB as well, there are only a few games that use 1.5gb while playing, before switching it was a lot more :p
 
Blackbeard said:
If you plan on keeping vista, either Buy more Ram which is Decreasing in Price, Even DDR 3 or Start using Ready Boost, or Both. I run 2 GB as well, there are only a few games that use 1.5gb while playing, before switching it was a lot more :p
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I had two main reasons for considering purchasing a 4GB RAM kit:
  1. Increase the amount of RAM
  2. Increase the speed of the RAM
My current RAM modules are PC2-5400 (or 5300, I forget). The RAM I plan on purchasing is PC2-6400.

I honestly don't know if I'll see much improvement in terms of RAM speed. What do you all think?
 
Hescominsoon said:
nopers..the 6400 will downclock.
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Well, I would pull the 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-5300 RAM and replace it with the 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400 RAM, if I were to buy it. Downclocking isn't an issue.

I just wanted to know if there's a noticeable performance boost going from PC2-5300 to PC2-6400 RAM.
 
no the ram is going to downclock to 5400 or lower..it depends on the notebooks motherboard..but i don't know of any except the boutique brands that come close to that ram speed due to heat issues.
 
you missed my point..if his motherboard doesn't do ddr2-800( and considering what was isntlaled wasn't ddr2-800) the chips are going to downclock no matter what..and most notebooks don't actually do ddr2-800
 
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