Question about memory

[Joel Merrill]

I have a 2 year old Dell with 1 Gig of Ram, an 80 Gig hard drive and the fastest processor Dell offered. When I am editing pictures, after I have done 8 to 10, my editing software gets real slow and then quits working. Everything else on my computer still works. Closing the program doesn't help. I have to reboot. I think it has something to do with my memory. I "Save" each picture after I'm done working with it so why is the memory still being used for it? It did this on my other computers too. They had Windows 98. This one has XP. Is there a way to clear the memory without rebooting? I also have Norton System Works and running Win Doctor doesn't help.

Joel

[Dave McClung]

Joel
I would speculate that the problem is with the way your software editing program is setting up a buffer on your hard drive. I remember when 80 Gig was a very large hard drive, but with 5 meg photos, it doesn't take that long to fill a 80 Gig Hard Drive.

Check your hard drive to see if it is getting full: Click on "My Computer", right click on "Drive C:", click on "properties." The graphic should show at least 8 Gig (10%) free space on your hard drive. If you don't have that much use the "Clean Disk" button to remove unwanted files, then defragment your drive. That should help.

[Adam Spriggs]

What program are you using to edit your pictures?

This depends on what software you are using, but programs like Photoshop and Fireworks have settings for "scratch disk space". It's used to keep track of undo steps and other things like that.

Increasing those values on wouldn't be a bad idea.

Norton Systemworks will surely not make your computer run any faster. It's got it's "fingers" in everything on your computer -- even on the low operating system level.

[Keith Isley]

Sometimes a software bug will cause a "memory leak" - where the application keeps on reserving memory, but doesn't let go of what it already has. Image editors from major vendors (i.e., Adobe, Microsoft) probably don't have this problem, but sometimes smaller companies ship software with bugs like this. My suggestion: try another program, if you can...there's a free one called "The Gimp" that can be downloaded. If nothing else, it will help you identify if the program, or your computer, is the problem.

- KAI

[Gina Stevenson]

"Image editors from major vendors (i.e., Adobe, Microsoft) probably don't have this problem, but sometimes smaller companies ship software with bugs like this. My suggestion: try another program, if you can...there's a free one called "The Gimp" that can be downloaded."

... that came with an inexpensive Friday-after-Thanksgiving camera [U-Lead], does anyone know if this one seems to work well, or not ... or if it's one of those "buggy" ones?? I went ahead & put it on here, but have only tried using it once with a few practice pics, so could easily remove it, if necessary.

Thanks!

[Keith Isley]

I've messed around some with ULead products....probably ok....ULead apps ship with a lot of inexpensive cameras. I would say let your experience be your guide. If you notice "bugginess" - crashing, slowdowns, etc. - that weren't there before, then pull it. Otherwise, enjoy.

- KAI

[Gina Stevenson]

... appreciate any comments that may help when it comes to computer "stuff." ;)

[Shin Inaba]

What kind of photo editor program are you using? Did your Dell machine originally came with 1 gig memory any chance? At least this would narrow down the problem.

Shin

[Joel Merrill]

What kind of photo editor program are you using? Did your Dell machine originally came with 1 gig memory any chance? At least this would narrow down the problem.

Shin

The program I use the most is ULead Photo Express 2.0. It is an old program made for Windows 98.

My computer came with 1 gig of RAM and a 3.4 processor. It has worked flawlessly in every other way,

Joel

[Shin Inaba]

Joel,
I was reading some info about Ulead Photo Express 2.0 OS requirements. What I understand, they run under Win 95/98/ME and NT. They didn't mention about Win 2k or XP. From my personal experience, Win 98/ME and NT have history of memory leaks which cause all kinds of application stability problems and have to be rebooted periodically. Some of the users from Ulead forum mentioned the program may be too old to run under XP. Have you considered upgrading to newer version any chance? Win 98 does not take advantage of 1 gig memory too well. Just a suggestion.

Shin

[Joel Merrill]

Joel,
I was reading some info about Ulead Photo Express 2.0 OS requirements. What I understand, they run under Win 95/98/ME and NT. They didn't mention about Win 2k or XP. From my personal experience, Win 98/ME and NT have history of memory leaks which cause all kinds of application stability problems and have to be rebooted periodically. Some of the users from Ulead forum mentioned the program may be too old to run under XP. Have you considered upgrading to newer version any chance? Win 98 does not take advantage of 1 gig memory too well. Just a suggestion.

Shin
Thank you for all of your research. I have looked for new software in the past but I suppose I need to look again. I have really liked Photo Express because it is easy to use and I could do so much with it. I use the cloning tool a lot. I'll start checking others out.

Thanks, Joel