Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Moving Sphere who wrote (11334)	9/25/2000 9:12:36 PM
From: stullbj	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14778

MS, The problem lies in your broker's proprietary software. The software was improperly coded to guard against memory leaks. Therefore, it hogs up all your memory. If you get more memory you'll still have the same problem. It will just hog up that much more memory. The best way to deal with it is to use either Windows NT 4.0 Workstation or Windows 2000. Both of these OSes have better memory management. Simply put, they don't let other programs invade other program's memory area. Windows 98 doesn't have this ability. Make sense? -Brian-

To: Moving Sphere who wrote (11334)	9/25/2000 9:23:20 PM
From: wily	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

MS, It sounds like you don't have a cpu saturation problem -- the only reservation being that it might have been a light day or you didn't have any heavily trading stocks open. There is a huge variation in cpu usage (where I'm sitting) depending on how intense the trading is. It really looks like the culprit, as you say, is the order processing program and that Win98 can't handle it. You may find out that the program is not compatible with win2K, so you better check first before you get too excited. Your commodity broker who you got the program from can probably tell you if people have better luck with it using win2K. OS resources are different from hardware resources. Don't ask (me) beyond this point because I don't know. I'm not familiar with that system monitor that you were using -- so I can't tell whether you got short on memory (probably not). wily

To: Moving Sphere who wrote (11334)	9/26/2000 1:51:03 AM
From: RC Stein	Respond to of 14778

MS,, here is my take on your problem and its probably worth exactly what you are paying for it.. First I don't remember seeing how much real memory you have on the machine. If not enough, then the Windows swap file is going to try and make up for it by using the swap file as virtual memory. If you hard drive is really loaded, it may not be able to expand the swap file to give you the virtual you need and everything is going to slow down, maybe even hang. Doesn't sound,from your description, that you have a cpu problem, my guess would probably be memory, either real or a combination of real and swap file. Course if you have enough real, the swap file seldom comes into play. I think the MAIN problem is the brokers program you mentioned, and the other poster was correct, if it is a POS, then even adding more memory will just allow it to gobble up more. Some software is so poorly written that when it loads, it grabs everthing it can and will NOT turn loose, even if you load it at a different time, it will sit and watch and when some memory is freed up by another program, it will grab it and keep it for ever, so over a period of time it kills your system. You need to contact the broker and ask if there is a fix out, you can't be the only one having the problem. Don't pay a lot of attention to your resource monitor, its pretty clunky, and at best is only giving you approximate information. The INMEM KB is the physical memory being used. The TOTAL KB is your virtual memory being used(swap file). Look under help in the TASKINFO 2000 program and it will give you definitions for all of this stuff. I think the TOTAL RESOURCES USED refers to your memory, real and virtual, not your cpu resources, so 93% indicates that it is using 93% of the total allocated real and virtual memeory, if it needs more, it should expand your swap file, if it can, but if your drive is real full, it won't, it will just swap the hell out of everything running which will slow things down dramatically. First you should probably contact the broker and complain, course they may not worry about it because most of their customers are probably not running a real time software and don't have the problem of things locking up.... Just my two cents worth, and I don't really know much about it anyway.. Richard

To: Moving Sphere who wrote (11334)	9/26/2000 2:11:15 AM
From: wily	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14778

MS, RC Stein is right -- you really have to know the meaning of the numbers on the monitor you are using. I don't know about Windows Resource Meter, because I rarely use it, and I never have OS resource problems. But the Windows System Monitor works very well and I have absolute confidence in the numbers it gives. I've identified several problems with it, monitoring only physical RAM usage and cpu usage. You can use Edit to add or remove functions you do or do not want to monitor. You can also configure it to show charts, bars or numbers. Here's how mine looks: frontiernet.net You can also choose View/Always on top and put it in the corner so it will be right there when your system screws up. When the cpu is saturated, Kernel: Processor Usage(%) will say 100%. Problem range for memory would be less than a few MB. You probably won't notice any problems until it reads in the KB's. wily