HI. Could somebody help with my computer. I have 256 RAM and it only shows 50MB free..and my computer runs very slow especially when I open applications. what could be my problem? Can I do something about this?

Your problem is that you do not have enough RAM. 256 is very little nowadays. Buy more its cheap.

HI. Could somebody help with my computer. I have 256 RAM and it only shows 50MB free..and my computer runs very slow especially when I open applications. what could be my problem? Can I do something about this?

With newer Operating Systems like Windows XP, the GUI (Graphical User Interface) takes up a big part of memory, along with any background programs you have running. I have two 512MB ram cards in my computer which makes it 1GB of ram. I never have any problems. Even running games that take up a lot of memory. But that's also depending on the speed of the processor.

Hope this helped!

You must be running XP. Disable unneeded services and background programs that load on startup. 50MB free out of 256M is extremely low for an idling system.

Or switch to Windows 2000.

he's probly gotten a bad memory stick or something, because i've used 128 to run windows xp pro and it's fine. A little slow only, but still report 128. So if he's got 256 and only reads 50 then he probly did something wrong. Try looking into the bios and see if it reads it as a 256 or even on boot up.

This might be of some use to you: http://www.max2k.com/programs.php?id=12

This nifty little program will free up some RAM on your computer. However, I'd have to agree with with Blade_yaj... You might have a bad memory stick in there...

I dunno I think a default XP install with whatever software a person uses installed, XP does tend to use over 200 mb of memory. I think his memory is fine.

One other item to try: right-click My Computer ~> select Properties ~> Click the Advanced tab ~> click Settings under Performance ~> click Adjust for best performance. This will turn off some of the eye candy which is unnecessary at low memory levels.

Worth a try at least. I do it to my laptops. They actually run a lot smoother.