system resources

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my support person has advised me to uninstall Zone Alarm “because it may be using up to 10% of your system resources” which are down to 55%, he says. He says I have a lot of stuff in Startup. I have Zone Alarm, NAV, the automatic receive feature of WinFax Pro 10, and the volume control in the tray at the lower right side of the screen.
He says that may be part of the problem I have been having with WinFax Pro.
Is this for real?
If so, how do I increase the system requirements?

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THe problem in solving this problem is that we don’t know enough about your system to advise you on it. How much total memory are you running now?

Before you can go much further, what are the details on your machine? Processor speed, memory, the whole kit and caboodle?

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Here’s what I copied from BeLarc Advisor:
Operating System: Windows 98SE
Processor: 400 megahertz Intel Celeron, 32 kilobyte primary memory cache, 128 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Drives: 8.43 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity, 5.41 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
Sony CD-ROM CDU701
Generic floppy disk drive (3.5″)
Generic IDE hard disk drive (8.43 GB)
IOMEGA ZIP 100 (Hard Drive)

Controllers: Standard Floppy Disk Controller, Creative Labs IDE controller; Intel 82371AB/ED PCI Bus Master IDE Controller’; Primary IDE Controller (dual fifo); Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

BUS ADAPTERS Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller.

128 Megabytes Installed Memory; 128 Megabyte Module Size – 1 installed; One memory socket is empty.

When I do Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Resource Meter with NAV, Winfax Pro 10 automatic receive, and Volume control in the box at the lower right corner of the screen I get System Resources: 52% User Resources: 52% GDI Resources: 81%. If I close Zone Alarm the numbers go up 3%. Right now, without Zone Alarm and while hooked up to the internet the first 2 numbers are down to 43% and the GID is 73% free. I know there’s a pie chart someplace that shows how much memory is used. I don’t know where to find it but I remember that there is still about 55 or 60 % free space on hard drive 1 and hard drive 2 is nearly empty.

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Thanks for the additional information.

Based on what you’ve posted, I can’t see the additional RAM as a reason for the CDROM to quit – quite frankly, CDROMs don’t care how much memory your system has. Windows cares about it a lot. ZoneAlarm monitors network connections, such as your internet connection, and I’ve never seen an instance where it would cause hardware to fail. At worst it would prevent access to the Internet if improperly set up.

I think it’s more likely that you have a line in your system’s AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS that is loading DOS-based drivers for the device. To check and see if this is the case, go to the Start button, click on it, and then click run. In the box that appears, type in MSCONFIG. There should be a box that appears with AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS across the top list of tabs.

If you see anything with MSCDEX listed, or CDROM.SYS – something to that effect – try removing the checkmark and rebooting. If you have the time, post what you see in that box here.

You will also find a STARTUP tab. That will list everything that starts with Windows, and I’d wager you have some things in that list that you never knew about. It seems rather odd that your system resources would be so low with that amount of memory unless a) you have a lot of things running hideen or Windows is hosed and needs to be re-installed.

Also, check Device Manager and see if your CD ROM is listed there. If it has a yellow exclamation point over it, there is a problem with it. If there’s a red ‘x’, it’s been disabled for some reason. To get to the device manager, go into the Control Panel and double click on system and then click over to the Device Manager tab.

There’s a reason for what’s happening, to be sure, but let’s check and make sure that all is well with your hardware setup before you start removing software that you have no good reason to suspect (such as WinFax and ZoneAlarm).

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Some how I have given you the wrong impression. There’s nothing wrong with the CD-Rom. It works fine.
What doesn’t work fine is WinFaxPro 10. The automatic receive feature has never worked like it was supposed to. After a year of trying to “fix” it with help from Symantec and Microsoft, I gave up and bought an external modem just for the fax program.
My local technican expert (who has a “thing” about Zone Alarm) said my resources were running too low and that may have been causing the problem with the fax device. So, I ran a little test and found out that Zone Alarm was using 3% of the resources. The resources are running low, just over 50% when nothing much is going on. The problem may be with system resources but it isn’t bothering the CD-Rom. I appreciate your willingness to help. Maybe this new information will help you help me. Thanks.

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I did as you suggested in your reply. I checked AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. There wasn’t anything in Autoexec. There were 2 unchecked files in Config.sys neither of which were the files you mentioned. I did STARTUP too. I have worked that over and had my local resource person help. I think we have that pretty well cleaned up. My CD rom is listed in Device Manager, but there aren’t any red or yellow things on or around it. I did print out the attachment mentioned in the other response I got. I did the easy stuff in his instructions. I didn’t clean up the fonts because it looked like it was going to take a lot of time. I haven’t done the DOS configuration changes yet either. What little I did restored system resources from 52 back to 66% or more, depending on whether I shut down Zone Alarm.

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I have attached a short document that may help you “clean up” and free some resources. It is a Rich Text File so you can read it in wordpad.

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You do great work! I did all the easy fixes in ytour Spped up Boot up paper and system resources increased more than 10%. Up to 66% now. I’m going to work on the fonts someday when I have lots of time.
Many thanks.

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