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Date:	Wed, 20 Jun 2001 19:52:31 PDT
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: The big slow down

Content Type: text/plain

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mrakijas wrote:
>
> OS2.INI is about 1.2MB. OS2SYS.INI is about
> 550K. Doesn't sound too big, does it?

Sounds fine.

> >2) Does OS/2 see all of your RAM?
>
> It's only one 128K DIMM. I suppose it could
> have partially gone bad but wouldn't the
> failure mode have caused more to gone wrong?

Depends. I don't know what OS/2 does with a memory failure; the
motherboard BIOS used to "stop" at the first bad memory address and use
everything below it.

> In the mean time, what's the best
> way to check free mem in OS/2?

I use MEMWATCH, a memory reporting utility with a nice graph that
updates every second.

http://www.powerutilities.no/memwatch.html

Notes & Warnings: I use version 1.1 from April 1998; the current
version 1.2 is dated 1999. I *think* the newer version 1.2 of MEMWATCH
works fine but it also comes with an UNINSTALL.EXE utility which you
should IMMEDIATELY erase. The uninstall utility deletes everything in
the current directory, not just MEMWATCH. I found out the hard way.

> >3) How big does your \OS2\SYSTEM\SWAPPER.DAT
> >swap file get?
>
> Initial size was set to 16MB but it looked like
> it was getting to 32MB during this latest
> escapade. So I changed the initial size to
> 32MB and that's pretty much where it stayed.
> No change in performance, though.

If you have a lot of stuff in your Startup folder, try creating a
temporary folder in Startup and moving the non-essential stuff into it.
Then reboot so you don't have the extra stuff running and see if your
system is still sluggish or if it is now responsive.

On my own main desktop system I use the default 2 MB swap file and
hardly ever swap to it (I have 256 MB of RAM). When I _do_ use the swap
file my system starts to slow down and by the time I get up to about
40-50 MB of swap file it's really sluggish. The solution here is to
reboot to get back to an unused 2 MB swap file.

Let me know what happens. I'm curious if removing your swap activity
makes the system responsive again.

Finally, one more possibility: Does Netscape start when you boot
(either because it's in your Startup folder or because it was open when
you shut down)? If so, is it opening a "large" page (one with a lot of
graphics) and what is the size of your netscape.hst file (run DIR
NETSCAPE.HST /S to find it)?

- Peter

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