Re: Win10 low RAM

On 11/5/2021 4:13 PM, philo wrote:
> I have a friend with an almost unusable laptop running Win10 64 bit. The machine cannot accept more than 4 gigs of RAM.
> 
> 
>  From my experimenting  with other low end machines, I've found that 3 megs of RAM and Win10 32 bit gives much better performance than Win10_64 and 4 gigs of RAM>
> 
> I've been thinking of reloading the OS, but wonder if I'd be better off just cloning to a SSD?
> 
> 
> Yes, they will get a new machine one of these days bit for now, their smartphone is sufficient.
> 

Reload the OS.

That's not normal.

It is Windows 11 that needs the RAM. And a ton of other things.

Windows 10, the kernel needs 256-350MB of RAM, as rough numbers.
When operated with 1GB of RAM, the "hard faults" should stop
happening in the performance monitor. There's no need to
do memory compression, when 1GB is installed.

There must be something else loaded, to upset it like that.

The next thing to check, is Windows Update. Like most modern Windows
OSes, the two Windows Update services are a pig, and can drive
RAM usage into the stratosphere. If the Windows Update is broken
and behind, the machine can be working up a big sweat for nothing.

That's why I suggest a reload, with whatever you want, 32 or 64.
Just be careful that you match the user apps properly. For example,
a renter of Adobe software needs 64-bit, because Adobe only
supports 64-bit. Someone running 16-bit games, might need the
32-bit OS version for that.

And check the Crucial.com page for max RAM, and see what they
recommend.

Any time an OS and programs have a problem, if the thing is
running out of RAM, ordering more RAM won't fix it. Like,
for a "leak". If you put 256GB of RAM in it, that just
increases the time before it crashes on low memory.

If a machine is properly behaved, adding RAM allows more
programs to be open. And the amount of RAM you have,
should support quite a number of programs. Right now,
Firefox and Seamonkey are not well behaved, but an update
to Firefox may change that (the tab-unloader is back as
a concept, something they've been working on for two years).

    Paul