For some reason, i have okay system resources right after i start up windows... But my ram is completely gone!
I already checked msconfig and the only things i have running are explorer and systray and antivirus realtime...
What can i do?

Remove the anti-virus and then check your resource again, some programs do chew a lot of resources.

How much physical memory do you have ? What version of Windows ?

resources is no problem. Right after i start windows when i go to properties of my computer - advance - it tells me like 94% and after i use it for a while it goes down a bit to around 90%. But the amount of ram i have free is the problem. I have total 81,100k (laptop) and i have 0% free! To be exact - 4k of ram free...

System rResources and RAM are virtually totaly unrelated. I assume you mean you have 80 MB RAM, which is not a lot. Windows itself will use a lot of RAM and much of your RAM may be used by the Windows virtual disk cache. What laptop is it and as duffy asked what Windows version. Your laptops graphics adaptor and/or sound card/chip may use part of your RAM as well.

In the vcache section of system.ini try adding the following (use msconfig):
[vcache]
MinFileCache=2048
MaxFileCache=16384

This will limit the amount of RAM Widows will assign to the virtual disk cache to 16 MB. If this is not set Windows will grab all your RAM for the vcache and is not good at releasing it.

i have an old laptop. 80mb of ram, 150mh pentuim win98SE 4gig hard drive. It's got a standard grafics card... just the defualt one - (nothing special)
How do i check how much ram is availible? I had to download a ram-optimizing program that also told me that out of the 80mb i had 4k left! I deleted that program because it made everything slow after the program gave me like 70mb of free ram. Windows ran so slow afterworkds.
Is there a different way to see how much free ram i got without needing a seperate program?
Thanks

The System Monitor Tool will display the amount of free memory available. If this is installed it will be available in Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools. If it is not installed it can be installed from Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. Click the Windows Setup tab then the check box for the System Monitor.

Also do as I suggested and limit the vcache.

oh yeah. there was nothing under the vcache section and i just copied and pasted those lines you posted here. I didn't notice anything different and don't really know what those two line would do, but i saved them in the system.ini

also - how about virtual memory? Should i "let windows manage my virtual memory"? or should i do it myself? If so - i know you'd need my specs to give me advice on that. I have 4 gig hard drive. 1.7 is free. 81,667mb of ram. 150mgh pentium...
Thanks (keymaster)

The virtual disk caches holds data just read from the hard drive. It is based on the Computer Science statistic that in most cases the same data and nearby data is repeatedly used in an overwhelming majority of all cases.

Thus rather than reading just a few kilobytes of data needed immediately the system will read enough sequential data to fill this cache (which could be hundreds of MBs), while the CPU is processing the data needed or waiting for user action. Then the disk will not have to seek and fetch data again in most cases at slow hard disk speeds since the data can most likely can be simply fetched from memory at much faster rates.

Unfortunely the system doesn't manage this process as well as you'd like sometimes and will set aside almost all your RAM for this cache, which defeats it's purpose because it is than forced to use the hard disk for virtual memory when it runs out of RAM, thus defeating it's objective of trying to avoid disk I/O. The fact is in most cases 16 MB is as much disk cache as you will likely need especially with a system with only 80 MB.

I would let Windows manage the virtual memory, since Windows will have to use it frequently with so little RAM free.

BTW, boot to safe mode and check the RAM. This will let you know whether something loading in Normal Windows startup is consuming your RAM.

The RAM usage is kinda normal, I still use a P166/64MB on Win98SE, after Windows, I be lucky to have 5MB free if I start up anything.

I would stick with what KM said, leave the Virtual memory to Windows.

HTH

I went to microsoft system information and pressed DMA.
line 0: crystal PnP audio System CODEC
line 1: crystal PnP audio System CODEC

I got the same line twice! How come?
I went to system monitor and all it shows me is CPU usage. I want to see availible memory...
Thanks everyone