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From: 07790@tanus.oz.au (Brant Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Out of resource in Windows 3?
Message-ID: <304@jabaru.oz.au>
Date: 13 May 91 13:16:02 GMT
Sender: news@jabaru.oz.au
Organization: People-Net [tanus], Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 36

The System Resources reported in the help about program manager is a more
accurate measure of the performance of your system than is the amount of
memory reported by the same or any other free-memory utility. The reasons for
this are as follows:

In the Windows memory management scheme there is two segments of memory set
aside to "remember" what's what. By this I mean if a window is minimized then
this memory stores the RESTORED window size and position and what was
happening - i.e. where the cursor was, if something was highlighted or
selected, position of icons and a few others.

Now assume that you have several windows (programs) running and the amount of
memory it would take to store this info, don't forget to add all the info for
EACH group in the program manager - yes the more groups and icons the lower
you push your system resources! You now can begin to imagine what's happening
- and due to certain DOS restrictions this memory area that holds this info is
restricted to equal segments of 32K (64?) -either way that's not much. So you
can have 11 meg free but no resources because you have lots of windows and no
more room to store the necessary info for general memory management.

Now you say this should easily be able to be overcome - just think though how
DOS allows memory allocation and the picture begins to come into place -
obviously improvements will be made due to the large chunk of resources that
some single programs can take up with all their windows.

General rule of thumb - as little as possible groups in program manager or
better still not use it if you insist on more resources. I tested this but
making over 30 groups in progman and tried to run an app - no app "Not enough
memory to run application, close one or more windows...". Hard to believe when
the only thing running is windows and progman!! TOO MANY GROUPS. Allt hese
groups and over 17000K memory free but 2% resources and a UAE!

Brant Campbell.

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