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XP memory management issue

Posted: 19 Apr 2003, 18:17
by Hammer
Since SP1 there has been a memory management issue introduced into XP. This causes problems with applications (including games) that use a lot of memory, causing slowdowns for startup and running if additional memory is allocated during runtime. Here is a link to a hotfix:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ahrk_2k/fi ... 86_ENU.exe

Here is the thread I have found it at with many positive results:

http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards ... 5;t=020350

Posted: 19 Apr 2003, 19:31
by Gator
Just so we have the full information ... I checked further ...

It looks like this really doesn't fix anything.

From the MS Knowledge Base (as of 4/12/2003):

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;815411
This fix in the Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) heap algorithm was released to better handle a particular atypical and uncommon sequence of heap requests by a private, internally developed program that is not commercially available. This program allocated and freed large chunks from the heap tens of thousands of times. The original scope and the size of the improvement for the particular program were mistakenly overstated in a prior version of this article based on an internal test application designed to reproduce the symptom, and is not relevant for any known programs or overall system performance. Typical Windows operation and common business, home, gaming and Internet programs will not be affected by this fix. It is not recommended that you use this fix except to address the specific program.

Posted: 19 Apr 2003, 19:43
by Hammer
so it is a sugar pill, aka. placebo... :) look at the "results" all of those folks are having in the SimHQ forum link...

Posted: 20 Apr 2003, 09:24
by Gator
Yeah, Steel, I read that thread ... amazing what people will believe ... I suppose we all believe what we want to believe.