Re: Program conflicts

> hi.  i'm having a severe problem which is preventing me from running two
> programs essential to my work, namely coldfusion server and website.
> according to my computer supplier, i'm having program conflicts which
> are affecting these (as well as other) programs.  in the last month and
> a half i've reformatted my hard drive twice, but the problems continue.
> how can i discover which program(s) is causing the problem, and fully
> correct the matter (preferably without another reformat)?

Ok, I'll bite. Earl you are probably not getting any responses because this
question is off topic for this list. This is more of a general computer
question then about general HTML authoring. However, I'll try to give you
some ideas:

It sounds like you may have a memory capacity issue. Qustion: When your
computer becomes sluggish, does your hard drive seem to be working overtime?
You may be on the edge for the amount of memory it takes for you to run what
you are trying to. On the average computer nowadays running Windows 95 or
98, 32Mb of RAM is the minimum recommended amount. On Windows NT this
increases to 64Mb because NT is such a hog for resources. If you are
designing for multimedia applications (such as the web), the tools of the
trade and the images themselves are notoriously memory hungry and will
demand that you go well above the minimum recommendations. If this is the
case, I would take the numbers I've mentioned and at least double them. A
possible reason for your computer taking an hour before the symptoms start
appearing is that while you are working and opening and closing windows,
starting and shutting down applications, not all the memory was freed back
up (a common problem due to sloppy programming). Which means, what precious
margin of free memory you had is slowly being eroded until  there is no
more, and then your hard drive starts working like a fiend. That's the hard
drive busy swapping memory back and forth between RAM and the drive itself.
(Ever play that little puzzle game that comes with every Machintosh?- kind
of the same thing going on). You can do several things:

1. Don't open as many applications at once. (not always a viable solution)
2. Check to see if your virtual memory or swap file (hard drive setting) is
at least twice the size of your physical RAM. (always, and if you can't
spare it, then maybe you also need a larger hard drive)
3. Buy more memory (ding ding ding, we have a winner)

hope this helps,
Steve
santonio(at)delanet.com

P.S. If you have any questions, email me privately and not this list.

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