Memory Watching

Since the stupid Virtual PC tricks quest began, I have been watching how random access memory works in the Windows Task Manager as I am trying to run a virtual machine with only 256MB of RAM in a physical host with only 512MB. I haven’t done stuff like this since I was trying to run Windows 3.x on a 286. The bullets so far:

• It’s better to run virtual machines hosted by Windows with 1GB of RAM or more.
• .NET applications launch and consume ‘crazy’ amounts of memory—but after awhile, when ‘things’ are sorted out, a .NET app’ can get as small a few Kilobytes in RAM. This must have something to do with garbage collection.
• It is possible for Windows Services to be “orphaned.”
• NET START/STOP Command Scripts are useful when memory needs are present.
• I dropped Sophos for EZ Antivirus because of its smaller memory footprint. I did the same to Windows Desktop Search for Google’s smaller (and more accurate) engine. (By the way, you can’t really uninstall Windows Desktop Search as it is to be considered a permanent part of the operating system—not even an optional Windows Component.)

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