Early last year, I wrote a post that advised using Task Manager to track memory usage. It included this quote:

Some people assume that the goal of memory management is to leave as much memory free as possible. (That attitude is especially prevalent among those who spent a long time working with the notoriously resource-challenged Windows 95/98/Me family.) In fact, for best performance your goal should be to make maximum use of RAM. Empty RAM does you no good. Windows can swap data in and out of RAM very quickly, so if memory is free, the cache manager tries to fill it up with as much data as possible. Likewise, a well-written program can and should load as much data into memory as possible so that it can respond quickly when you make a request.

Ken asks:

Are you suggesting here that you should try to run as many programs as possible at the same time to keep all of them in superfast RAM?

That’s kinda sorta what I do anyway, and I have never experienced any performance hit with XP for doing so. As long as these programs are loaded in RAM, they respond much faster. [Insert “well, duh!” here.] And they don’t hog CPU time except when they are actually doing something.

I’m not sure I would go as far as to say you should run as many programs as possible. In some cases, that strategy would take memory away from the cache manager, making some performance tradeoffs inevitable.

Off the top of my head, I’d say the single biggest piece of advice I would give people is this: Assuming you have sufficient RAM to run the programs you normally use, don’t close programs unless and until you need to close them. I watch people work regularly and I’m always amused at how novice users routinely close one program before opening another. I don’t know whether it’s the clutter or what, but that’s something novices almost always do.

In the case that Ken describes, assuming that your regular suite of programs doesn’t put you close to maxing out physical RAM, then yeah, it’s probably a good idea to open up the programs you’re going to use during a session and leave them open for the duration.

The PC Doctor has excellent advice on what to do when you PC locks up. It’s an excellent eight-point checklist, which is well worth reading and remembering right now, when your computer is working just fine. When you’re confronted with a mysterious lock-up, it helps to fall back on training like this. You might even want to print out the advice!

Oh, and he echoes one of my favorite pieces of advice in the “What I don’t do” section of the same piece: Don’t just start randomly pounding on the keyboard in the hopes that you’ll hit the magic key. If Windows is temporarily locked by a process that is refusing to give up control, you’ll fill the keyboard buffer with those random keystrokes, which will be executed in horribly annoying fashion when the misbehaving app finally surrenders control.

Q: I bought a box full of computer stuff at an auction yesterday. It contained a (what appears to be) retail copy of XP home edition (version 2002) including product key (sticker still attached to the manual). Right now I’m running Me on a custom built pc (900mhz athlon) that did NOT come with any os discs or recovery software. I meet the system requirements for running Windows XP, but… will I be able to reformat my hd and install this operating system? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

A: Yes, you will be able to install that operating system. The real question is whether you will be able to activate it over the Internet. If that product key has never been used, or if was last activated more than 120 days ago, then you probably will be able to activate. If the key has recently been used on another computer (one owned or controlled by the person from whom you bought the computer), then your online activation request will be rejected and you’ll have to talk to a representative on the phone and convince that person that you legitimately own the license.

I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t give you definitive advice on this. There are specific provisions in the Windows XP license agreement for transferring ownership. But in your case the practical concerns of activation are more important.

[Updated to correct error in grace period for activation. See the comments for more details.]

I get a lot of comments on this site every week, and lately it’s dawned on me that many of those comments are actually questions. I usually try to answer the question with a follow-up comment, if I can. But that means that the question and answer reach only a tiny percentage of the people who actually visit here.

So, beginning today, I have a new policy – and a new feature. If I find a question in the comments, I’ll answer it in a Q&A post, where everyone can see it and follow up on it.

And don’t feel like you have to leave a comment if you have a question. I’m also going to create an Ask Ed form and e-mail alias where you can send me questions. Those will appear in the sidebar along the right.

Coming up next, the first installment.

One of the core principles of effective troubleshooting is that degradation in performance almost always has a proximate cause. Find that cause, reverse it, and you restore performance to its previous, acceptable level.

When trying to track down that elusive proximate cause, the most important thing you can do is ask a simple question: What changed?

When did the problem start? Did you install a new program, device, or driver? Did Windows or a third-party program update itself? Did you experience a power failure? If you can reliably say that your system was performing properly on Wednesday but began misbehaving on Thursday, you may be able to use System Restore to undo system-level changes. If that works, you can try to figure out what happened so that you can prevent it from happening again.

Two key principles to follow when troubleshooting:

1. Stay alert. If you notice your computer slowing down or behaving in an out-of-the-ordinary way, investigate the cause as soon as possible. Don’t install any additional software or make any system changes until you’ve figured out the problem.
2. Don’t automatically assume that the first or most obvious change you think of is the proximate cause of your problem. If you installed a patch via Windows Update, that may or may not be the cause of your current problems.

In the next two installments, I’ll explain how to use diagnostic tools to zero in on the precise problem.

Yesterday, I explained how to rule out startup problems that are specific to your user profile.

If you’ve determined that your system’s slow startup happens even with a clean user account, you can move on to the next step. In this case, the problem could be a system service, a driver, or a program that is attempting to load before you get a chance to log on. To rule out this possibility, try disabling everything that starts automatically.

The easiest tool for this job is the System Configuration Utility, aka Msconfig.exe. This utility lets you fine-tune startup options for diagnostic purposes. I recommend you use it as follows:

1. Close all running programs and save any data files you’re working on. Click Start, Run. In the Open box, type msconfig and press Enter.
2. In the System Configuration Utility dialog box, select the Diagnostic Startup option on the General tab.



3. Click OK.
4. When prompted, choose the option to restart your computer.

The Diagnostic Startup option disables every startup program and most system services (leaving only a handful of core services such as DCOM and RPC running). When you restart, you’ll be greeted with the option shown here.

Click OK, but do not select the check box here. When the informational dialog box goes away, the System Configuration Utility opens again.

Did your system start without the delays you’ve been experiencing? If so, you can conclude that the culprit is one (or more) of the programs or services that are starting up automatically. Tomorrow’s tip will explain how to find that troublemaker.

If your startup was still unacceptably slow, the problem could be a defective piece of hardware, a corrupted Windows installation, or a faulty driver. I’ll tackle those topics later in the week.

What should you do if your system is taking longer than it should to start up? Don’t start randomly tweaking system settings. Instead, go through basic troubleshooting to see if you can narrow down the problem. This week, I’ll list five separate steps you can take to quickly narrow down the source of the problem.

One cause of slow startups is a program (or programs) trying unsuccessfully to load or make a network connection when you log on to your user account. To identify this sort of problem, create a new user account and log on using that account. If the new account starts up normally, you can start looking more closely at what’s happening in your user profile.

To create a new account, follow these steps:

1. Open Control Panel and double-click the User Accounts icon.
2. Click Create a new account.
3. Type a name for the new account and click Next.
4. In the Pick an account type dialog box, leave Computer administrator selected and click Create Account.

Log off (Start, Log Off, Log Off) and then log on using the new account. The first time you log on, you’ll experience a delay as Windows creates the files for your profile. After completing this step, shut down your computer and restart. When you reach the Welcome screen, choose the new account you created.

If you experience a slow logon, you can rule out any problem with your profile and focus on hardware-related issues or overall system settings.

The default mouse pointer in Windows XP is relatively small and relatively subtle. For most people, it’s big enough. But if you have anything less than perfect vision, you may benefit from a bigger, brighter mouse pointer.

To see the alternatives and experiment with different pointers, open Control Panel and double-click the Mouse icon.

On the Pointers tab, click the drop-down list under the Scheme heading. The 3-D Bronze scheme, shown below, adds a touch of color to the pointer but doesn’t change its size.

To add motion and extra color to your mouse pointers, try the Windows Animated scheme. If you want bigger arrows and hourglasses, use the Magnified scheme with its thick borders, or choose the Large or Extra Large versions of the Windows Default, Windows Black, or Windows Inverted schemes.

Preview the pointers in the list at the bottom of the box and choose OK or Apply. (For an explanation of the difference between these two buttons, see this tip from the archives.)

Change your mind? Go back to the Mouse Properties dialog box and click Use Default.