MMX keeps freezing

[Mon Ami Mate]

I'm having a few problems with my main PC. Every now and then it starts running more and more slowly. If I Ctrl/alt/del it always tells me that MMX is not responding. What now?!!

[alunr]

Can you tell me...

1. Which Operating System (95,98,2000,xp)
2. The full message is it mmx or mmx.exe or something different?

[Mon Ami Mate]

Thanks for your response Alun. It's Windows 98. I'll have to wait until it does it again before posting the message, but I'm pretty sure it's just MMX (not responding).

[sybaseian]

I'm having a few problems with my main PC. Every now and then it starts running more and more slowly. If I Ctrl/alt/del it always tells me that MMX is not responding. What now?!!

What processor is it? Pentium2/3/4 and speed?

How much and what type of RAM is in your PC?

How big is your Hard Drive?

If you have a slow processor, low RAM and a small Hard Drive, it could be that you are using all of your RAM and it is swapping to Page File on your Hard Drive - which could also be reaching it's limit.....

If this is the case, you can do one of two things:-

1. Upgrade your components or PC
2. Don't run too many programs at the same time - two programs can easily take all the resources if graphics are being used.

Generally, when you hit ctrl/alt/del and it says it's not responding, it usually is doing lots of RAM to Page File swapping. As Swapping to and from Page File is much slower than to and from RAM, it will take longer to bring the results/application back to you screen.

>> Edited by sybaseian on Wednesday 28th May 00:13

[Mon Ami Mate]

It's an AMD 1600, with an 80Gb hard drive.

[annodomini2]

MMX will be a program of some sort, when windows 98 crashes it will just give a memory address error, sounds like you should press ctrl,alt,del before crashing problems occur and see if this is running as a program, if not then you need a system admin tool to see what processes are running

[Mon Ami Mate]

Thank you. I'll give it a try.

[sybaseian]

Mon Ami Mate said: It's an AMD 1600, with an 80Gb hard drive.

How much RAM have you in your PC?

I have 1GB of RAM in my laptop and it can run slowly if I have a few programs running lots of graphics.

Windows generally takes the total amount of RAM and then takes the same amount for page file and then adds 50% more.

So I have 1.5GB of page file on my system, so it's unlikely to run out.

My old laptop had 96Mb of RAM and 144Mb of page file, and it was forever hanging while waiting for page file swapping.

[annodomini2]

If you have 1gb of ram running windows 98 then it's pointless, the os has hard coded maximum 128mb usage in the memory manager, upgrade to 2000 or XP.

[Griffless]

MMX support is a function of an Intel CPU. Your AMD chip uses 3D!Now technology instead. A BIOS update might be a solution, but I'd pursue this as a later option.

What are you doing when you experience problems? Which programs are running? Also, your graphics adapter might provide some clues - what card do you have?

Any other errors you've had - especially any BSOD info if you've been that unlucky - could be a great help, if you can remember any?

Although your MMX problem could be OS dependant, Win '98 will access your 1GB RAM. However, without tweaking your VCache settings, it often won't access anything above 512MB efficiently.

[annodomini2]

It won't, although it recongnises 1gb of ram, the memory manager is optimised for 128mb, anything above that gets automatically put in the swap file