Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies®

Chapter 11. The Mystery of System Resources (and Memory Leaks)

Computers are technical beasts. They always have been. Remember those photos of the nerdy-looking scientists back in the 1950s? They'd stand by those behemoth, vacuum-tube, room-size computers, wearing white lab coats and holding clipboards. They were the system engineers. Their job was to keep the PC running. That's still your job, contemporary advertising and marketing drivel to the contrary.

Your role as a computer owner implies that you should monitor a little bit of the system for the system's sake. Particularly in the case of troubleshooting, it helps to know, for example, what a system resource is and how to monitor performance. It also helps to understand the concept of a memory leak and how putting a pan under the PC won't assist with plugging the leak. This chapter tells you how to play the role of your PC's system engineer without getting a degree at MIT, donning a white lab coat, or cradling a clipboard.

The Terror of System Resources

No one cares about system resources until they're depleted. That's just human nature. It's why cars have gas gauges and oil lamps. Computers work the same way: You're alerted when system resources get low. But unlike your car, there is no twist-top on the PC into which you can pour a quart of new resources. Then again, it helps more to know about resources than to know which twist-top to unscrew.

System resources are simply the way the computer allocates its hardware—primarily memory, ...