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Hal's Hardware Haven
~~by Hal Cardona

System Resources: 
What Are They, What Are They Used For, Where Do They Go?  How Can I Get Them Back?

Hello Again,

Thanks to everyone who wrote in about my last column, I really do appreciate all your feedback.  Most of the comments were positive about the column’s technical level, so I will continue to write to what I consider to be a middle level of technical expertise.  You can contact me via e-mail at abcomputers@pcsleuth.com

What are System Resources?

This month’s column is about System Resources in Windows (unfortunately this topic is really geeky, so please bear with me!).  There are many definitions to this question that can deal with things like IRQ’s, Com Ports, Memory Addresses and the like, but for sake of this column we are going to be using Microsoft’s definition from Windows. Some of the most common questions I get asked as a professional PC troubleshooter are about System Resources.  Some of the questions are:

• Why does Windows say I don’t have enough memory to do this?  I just added more RAM; shouldn’t that have fixed it?

• Why are my System Resources so low?  I have more memory than everyone else?

The first thing you need to understand is what exactly System Resources are.  System Resources are a hold over from early versions of Windows.  In Windows 3.X they were three 64 kb heaps of memory called System, User and GDI (for Graphics Display Interface).  Unfortunately the sizes of these heaps are limited and adding RAM won’t help. 

Microsoft has kept them around ever since so that we can still run older 16-bit (Windows 3.1) applications in Windows 9.X.  Those of you that use Windows NT, 2000 or XP don’t have the same concerns because of the 32-bit architecture of those Operating Systems. 

You can find out what your remaining system Resources are by Right Clicking on My Computer and Selecting Properties and then the Performance Tab.

You can Monitor your System Resources by using the System Resource Meter.  The System Resource Meter is part of Windows; you can find it in Start> Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Resource Meter.  If it isn’t installed you can install it from the System Tools Section of the Windows Setup Tab in the Add/Remove Programs Applet in the Control Panel.

What are they used for and where do they go?

Windows uses System Resources for many different functions, from loading a Font and displaying an icon to having a printer or a modem attached to your computer.  

You can run out of System Resources by doing much of anything in Windows 9.X.  The following chart will give you some ideas on the limits imposed by System Resources.  When you close a poorly written program, it won’t release the System Resources it used to do things .i.e: displaying a tool bar. 

You can use the resource meter to monitor your System Resources and find out how much each program uses. If you identify a Resource “hog” then you can decide if that program is worth it for you to keep. 

As you can see from the chart, even though we continue to struggle with System Resources in Windows 9.X, it is a whole lot better than the 3.X line!

How do I get them back?

The question everyone always asks now is:

What can I do to recover some of these precious System Resources?

If you want to use Windows, there are only 3 real (effective) answers:

1. Reboot Windows 9.X
2. Upgrade to a full 32-bit Windows platform like Windows NT, 2000 or XP.
3. Use fewer of them all the time and don’t use programs that are “resource hogs”

Since answers 1 and 2 are self explanatory let’s take a little time to look at number 3.  Using the chart above you can see that having every font in the world loading all the time isn’t a good use of your System Resources; perhaps you should unload the one you found for Aunt Mabel’s 87^th Birthday!  I am not an expert on fonts but there a few that you need to keep for Windows to run well, so make sure you don’t remove these: 

• 8514*.fon

• Arial (and it’s variants)

• Book Antigua

• Calisto MT

• Copperplate Gothic

• Courier New (and it’s variants)

• Courier (and it’s variants)

• MS-DOS CP 437

• Century Gothic (and it’s variants)

• Impact

• Lucida (and it’s variants)

• Marlett

• Matisse

• Modern

• News Gothic (and it’s variants)

• OCR A

• MS Sans Serif (and it’s variants)

• Symbol (and it’s variants)

• Tempus Sans

• Times New Roman (and it’s variants)

• Verdana (and it’s variants)

• Fixedsys

• Terminal

• Webdings

• Westminster

• Wingdings

Some of these you can probably remove. They are on Microsoft’s List of Fonts included in Windows though, so don’t just delete them!  Copy them somewhere other than the font’s folder first to see if need them, make sure that Windows runs well before you delete them.

 <<editor's note:  for more info on how to manage your fonts so you don't have to REmove the ones you don't want hogging your resources, but rather just MOVE them, read my ebook MS Word Magic! I: Fonts, Fun and Formats>> 

One of the best ways I’ve found to conserve System Resources is to limit the programs that start-up with your computer.  

Often ill-behaved programs will install themselves in such a way to make things “easier” or “faster loading” for you.  I feel they are ill-behaved because they don’t even ask first!  You can often identify these programs by the icons they place in your system tray (next to your clock on your Windows Taskbar). In reality they are often unnecessary.  You can clear them out, but it can often take several methods, which I will list below. 

1. The first step is to identify which programs put icons in the system tray.  You can do that by right-, left- or double-clicking on the icons and seeing what opens.
2. Right or left click on the icon and look for a hide icon option.  You may also find a Preferences or Options section and a way to disable the tray icon.
3. Open the program that the icon represents and find the Preferences or Options section and look for a way to disable the tray icon.
4. If you are running Windows 98 or ME, Press Start>Run then type in msconfig and press Enter.  Look in the Startup tab for the program whose tray icon you wish to disable and uncheck it.  If you are running 95, Right click on the Start button and select Explore, open the Programs Folder and then the Startup folder, and then delete the icons for the program whose tray icon you wish to disable.  In my opinion you should only load those programs at Start-up that you use on a regular basis.

<<editor's note: for more information on msconfig, see Linda's Soapbox in this issue and click on the link I found there>>

5. Of course you can always use the ADD/Remove Programs Applet in the Control Panel to completely remove the program.

Another way to conserve System Resources is to just remove programs that you don’t use any more! 

Hopefully you have found this column helpful (and not too geeky!).  I have tried to make a rather complex topic understandable, please let me know what you think.  Let me know how you feel about the technical geekiness of the article and if you have any suggestions for future articles. 

Thanks for reading.

Hal Cardona
PC Sleuth  

Hal Cardona, PC Sleuth, serves as tech support and/or offsite Sys Admin for over 200 clients around the US.  He designs, builds, and troubleshoots networks and builds custom computer systems.