alright, it's been a while since i posted here.

as you can see in my sig, i have the Prostar 8814, which for all intents and purposes is identical to the Sager 8890. little over 2 yrs old. got it about beginning of Oct. '03.

i orginally ordered it with only 512 MB ram (2x256). and not too long ago upgraded it to 1 GB (2x512).

firstly... when i had ony 512, the system would seem a hair sluggish when mem usage got over 512 (meaning lot of HDD swap)...

so then up to 1 GB... what i notice is, i have a progam with a memory leak (not a whole lot i can do about it, other than reboot every so often, until it's updated)... when my memory reaches about 480 mb usage, and sometimes above 512... it does the same thing... i especially feel it when running Maxthon (it doesn't really have a mem leak, but it is affected by it). after a few hours of being on, Maxthon starts doing a periodical pause... which annoys me to no end when trying to type something (like this post)... a quick restart of Maxthon only solves the issue for about a minute (literally). so ATM, i'm trying out Opera. however, i am currently taking a java class, and the IDE that i am using is JCreator Pro... and wouldn't you know it... that thing likes to pause too while i'm tyring to code... which again, COMPLETELY DRIVES ME BONKERS almost felt like throwing my laptop into the wall, plugs and all. and no, maxthon is NOT running while i code... i can't be bothered to do anything while coding, except listen to some music.

but nonetheless, my system does seem like it still has the 512 limit... self-imposed, apparently.

the 1 GB of ram is not Apacer (that the original 512 was), but it is spec'd with the same speed and timings, from OCZ (best deal i could handle at the time).

as for the rest of my specs, it's a basic 8814/8890. 2.8 P4, 1 GB ram, ati 9600, two 60 GB 7200 rom hdds (upgraded from the original 40 GB 4300 rpm toshiba)... and the internal tv-tuner is in there...

additionally, the tv-tuner seems to like giving me BSODs when i run 2 other programs (most of the time Maxthon being one of them). i would be inclined to blame maxthon, but it isn't always the case. but to be thorough, that's why i'm trying out Opera.

*note i moved this here myself, since i didn't realize i had originally posted in the driver sections.

ok first up does the system know you have 1GB of memory present?
Best way to check this is to bring up the Windows task manager.
C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe
Select the Performance Tab
Under Physical memory it should show Total 1047520 or similar.
Available should be something like 484k (I am currently running Maxthon, Outlook and a couple of other apps as well so your available figure will vary).
Your Commit Charge (Microstuffed's way of saying cache should be 400k and rarely change if your available memory is larger than about 100k. Now load your applications and watch the Page File Usage History graph - it should stay almost level.

Good luck.

On the TV tuner issue, which version of the Tuner software are you running.
Avermedia's 4.24 is stable

hehe... sorry for the very late response...

yeah, the system does know there's 1 GB of ram. and even after two months, that pausing is still there... i just shut everything down when coding... that keeps the pausing to a minimum.

I'll probably have to "refresh" my laptop sometime soon anyway... maybe it's just something leftover...sigh.

about my tv-tuner... i've been running 4.24... only because ANYTHING else crashes in some form or another (without any other program running).

i've learned to be a bit more cautious with the tuner... keeping my "multi-tasking" to a minimum.

now, i'll just hijack my own thread... i have a pet-peeve about the tuner software...

the tvfleet2 software from Sager ticks me off when it comes to Full Screen... in that, I have two monitors, and it never full screens on my second monitor, and just full screens on my primary monitor... and of course it doesn't change the resolution from 640*480. it looks horrible... with a little bit of work, i can make it show up on my second monitor (ie, making the external into the primary), but that throws off everything else, on how i work with my laptop... like my games, it's very hard for me to play using a monitor to my side.

aver 203's 5.2.0.31 app likes to crash... taking my laptop with it (BSOD). and i can't seem to change the display setting from overlay to primary (in overlay mode it pauses like crazy, can't watch anything!). but the interface looks TONS better than tvfleet2, and i can do full screen on my secondary monitor.

even DScaler BSOD'd on me.

i loved my tv-tuner on my desktop... it was smooth, went full screen (looked good!), and didn't crash on me... the only flaw with the setup was, i had to constantly flip my kvm when i needed to work with programs on my second monitor. but since my desktop cpu fried itself, the then downgraded system (i still had my older parts) can't handle a tv-tuner... the down graded CPU needed the older mobo... and the older mobo couldn't use the newer video card, so it had to use an even older video card (Viper II anyone?)... it was HORRIBLE!!!!

sigh.