smc1979

I hope you guys don't mind, but I am looking for feedback as I make CleanMem 2.0 CleanMem itself will stay free as always and will still be set it and forget it. The mini monitor will be a free/pro version that I will sale for $4.99 And most importantly, EVERYTHING in CleanMem 1.7.0 will also be in 2.0 and still be free. It doesn't feel right to take away features from user I have details on the new version here http://forums.pcwintech.com/index.php/topic,1781.msg10583.html And here is a screen shot as the program looks so far as of today. (I will also attach the screen shot) http://www.pcwintech.com/files/cleanmem_2.0_in_the_works.png Feedback would be great. And thanks again everyone :-) Shane

I downloaded Defraggler today. (thanks willy2 for making me aware of it) love the app by the way. As DF was moving one of my vmware files (20 gb) to the end of the hard drive DF memory usage was about 175 mb. I ran cleanmem and the memory didn't move. Because all the memory in DF was in use. After the file move DF did a good job lowering and went back down to 20 mb or so. Then cleanmem took it down to 2 mb while it was moving small files. DF does a good job cleaning up after itself. Some things are impossible to clean up. A least for me with vb. That's where I think cleanmem comes in and helps DF. Point is, from one programmer to another, thumbs up for good programming and the cleaning up DF does :-) Shane

CleanMem v1.7.0 is released. I hope you guys enjoy it, and thanks for putting up with me :-) http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem Shane

I still have no idea lol Shane

Good to hear :-) New settings gui is working good for you? I have it set to do two things when you click finish. 1st. it saves all the settings to the CleanMem.ini file in the same dir. 2nd. it checks the system 32 dir for CleanMem.exe, if it is there it copies the CleanMem.ini to the system32 dir. The system32 dir is used for the task scheduler (The task scheduler runs cleanmem from there). There are people who use cleanmem on a thumb drive, or who don't use the task scheduler. By checking for cleanmem.exe in the system 32 dir it avoids copying the ini file when it isn't needed :-) Shane

Yes those text files are no longer needed. they can be deleted. This version is the release candidate. No one finds any problems then this is the version to go out :-) The manifest file tells vista and windows 7 to run cleanmem with admin rights. Shane

CleanMem v1.7.0 is ready for testing :-) Feedback would be great! I need to know if you like the changes, likes, dislikes, if the new version is good, all that good stuff. This version isn't released yet as I want people to try it out first. Here is the download link http://www.pcwintech.com/files/setups/cleanmem_v1.7.0_setup.exe And here is the Change log: v1.7.0 Major update. Make sure to uninstall any old versions of CleanMem first. CleanMem is now 3.5x faster. CleanMem use to take 3.5 sec to do its job and close. It now takes 1 sec. Update to the mini monitor to show actual percentage of memory use. This shows up in the tooltip text of the system tray icon. Since the tray icon can only fit 2 chars the percentage is rounded. But in the tooltip it will show the current. Example: 35.635% The system tray icon only changes when the percentage changes. When a user would update the colors of the try icon the change wouldn't happen till then. Now when a user changes anything for the system tray icon it will update immediately. Added global hotkey support to the mini monitor. The user can now set what keys to hit to run CleanMem. Added a GUI for the settings of CleanMem. CleanMem now stores all settings in one ini file instead of multiple text files. Minor tweaks and fine tuning to the mini monitor. CleanMem setup now auto detects if a system is 32 or 64 bit and selects the correct install option during setup. CleanMem setup support silent installs. Shane

Your right. I have 15 years in computers and own an computer repair company now for 8 years. So for me I can get away with no page file. And if for some reason I do start getting blue screens I can always re-enable the page file. Again though, this is simply fitting my needs. I would only recommend getting rid of the page file if the user has enough ram, and knows how to turn the page file on & off. Granted I haven't had a blue screen or infection for over 5 years. My opinion is a little biased on this. For me, getting rid of the page file eliminated the hard drive thrashing after very large (in size and in count) files during the backup process, or when backing up a customers machine to my hard drive across the network. Cleanmem however helps keeps this under control with clearing the file cache. I don't need to disable my page file thanks to cleanmem. This is more for me wanting to push a little more out of my system. Mainly when I am in the middle of programming or working I hate it when the system starts to become sluggish because I have a customers machine backing up to my system while I work. :-) Also thanks for letting me know about those tools. I always used the event viewer and recent changes to a system to find the cause of blue screens. I will be adding those tools to my toolbox :-) Shane

Correct, but the only time I would need that is if I get a blue screen. If my system becomes unstable I will re-enable the page file to get the mini dump. But then again I never use the mini dump in the first place :-) Pro and cons to everything, for me the pros out weigh the cons when it comes to not having a page file. But this is based on my system with my needs. Hard to tell what is right for other users. Shane

To me it would be disrespectful for me to come onto this forum and try to have others come to my forum. Just not the person I am. So for me posting here, where I can get feedback and make CleanMem better seems the best thing to do and not try to get more traffic to my site, I would rather earn that :-) I made the clearing of the file cache from the same api as CacheSet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897561 The reason behind this was from my own reasons. Every time I had my data backup to my external hard drive (Talking 300+GB of data) by system would go to a crawl (8GB of memory and WD black edition hard drives, in Raid 1). This might have been on XP at the time, can't remember if it was XP or 7. When the system would slow down like that, anything I tried to do would take forever, and I would see my hard drive fully lit up. Then I took a look at CacheSet and seen my file cache being huge! And doing anything was causing tons of hard drive thrashing. (Dont know 100% why, perhaps the file cache was partially in the page file?) Then I used CacheSet to clear it, and bang! my system was back to normal without the reboot! So I decided I wanted this to happen regularly and I went did the research and added it to CleanMem. Want to know a nice trick I do on my system now? Even with CleanMem clearing it, after a large backup my system still gets slow, with CleanMem it doesn't get any where near as slow as it use to before the file cache clearing. I have 8 GB of ram, and though to my self, I never use more than 2 GB, why have the curse of the page file? So I disable the page file. Now after a large backup my system doesn't even hiccup. Seems to me the file cache does use the page file at times. So clearing the file cache does help. I have added that to my to do list :-) Shane

The wizard wont be a automatic thing. it will be stored as CleanMem_Settings.exe Instead of txt files I will make them into dat files, still editable in notepad. And cleanmem.exe will have a settings.ini file to tell it what needs to be used and which dat file to use if any. The default will still be to install it and forget it. But if a user wants to change the settings will run CleanMem_Settings.exe Shane

I know I should post this in my cleanmem forum, But I need the feedback :-P I am revamping how cleanmem handles the settings for v1.7.0. And in turn I am making a gui for the settings. I have attached some screen shots of the first run of it. How does it look so far? Shane

I sure will :-) Once I jack my self up full of caffeine I will be starting work on it today after I finish today's batch of routers for the simple port forwarding program. Having a wife and 4 kids makes me pay the price for staying up late programming. Little sleep :-) Shane

:-) Just so you know, cleanmem.exe in 1.6.5 is still the same from 1.5.1 Only the monitor was added, and the monitor is separate. So for any reason you lose 1.5.1 you can still get what you want with the new version :-) I make a strong effort to keep both types of users happy. The users who love cleanmem as set it and forget it (No gui) and the ones you wanted a gui for so long. Shane

Your right this should be over in my forums. Didn't mean to hijack the thread :-) I wanted feedback more than traffic :-) I wont be removing any of the current settings. Almost all those settings I used from my Simple Internet Meter, and all of those where by user request. So the cleanmem mini monitor is all by user request of what is in there. If I make the settings gui it will be a exe by itself as well. Anyways I wont keep taking up space here, and I will try to have an update out in the next day or so :-D Take care! Shane

For now, personally I don't think a cpu option is needed. But just because I think that doesn't mean I am right. If anyone else requests it I will add it ;-) Shane

Thats what is hard to tell. Last night was playing Battlefield 2 Vietnam with some friends. I gave them all a test exe that would run cleanmem when they hit the "T" key on their keyboard. As we where all in game I had them all run cleanmem during a firefight and none of them felt any hicups or anything. (They all now love cleanmem lol) I have dual monitors, I had the mini monitor on the 2nd screen. While playing I ran cleanmem and 400 mb of memory where freed from the game and it didn't skip a beat. the game would slowly climb back up, but I have cleanmem running every 15 min on my system. (I also have 8gb of ram and my page file disabled) They did not have their page file disabled, and we all have pretty high end gaming rigs. (So not sure how good of a test this would be vs older systems, but this is while playing a game after all) CPU has never seem to be a problem as cleanmem needs VERY little. Cleanmem opens, loads the txt files, loops through the process list and runs the api call on each or by how ever the user has their settings, records any logs if set, and closes itself. happens all very fast. Perhaps it would be better to just have cleanmem set to run in a low cpu priority instead? Thoughts? Shane

I could do something like that. May I ask why you want that feature? To be honest I am on a quad core 3.4ghz per core system, so CPU isn't really a problem. Do you notice a hit to the system when you have your cpu maxed? say on a single or dual core? If so then this would be a good option. Only problem would be that cleanmem runs from the task scheduler. In order for me to do advanced options like that I can let the user choose between using cleanmem by the task scheduler or using the mini monitor. Then I can build the cleanmem functions into the min monitor, and since it will be running all the time (If a user wants) then I can add advanced monitoring like CPU and more. Shane

Before I had the mini monitor there was no GUI for cleanmem. So I had the txt files. Now that I have the mini monitor I am thinking of making a gui for the settings as well now :-) Shane

I am working on a new version of the min monitor to include a key hook function, so you can set what key to hit on your keyboard and have cleanmem run. I use this for when I am in games. Also adding a few other things. Any changes you think I should make while I am at it? Shane

Thanks for letting my know the file cache does that. Its not suppose to, I am using the same api as here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897561 So if you can confirm that the file cache is causing that I will make the file cache disabled as default instead of enabled :-) Shane

I thought I would also elaborate more on some users saying CleanMem has stopped some memory errors and made some things more stable. This is for anyone who is wondering how a user would come up with using less memory as being more stable. (This is simply my opinion on this and I am looking at it from a repair tech & programmer point of view) On a system that is under heavy page file usage you get a higher price for using the page file. And not just the slow down. The hard drive can have a bad file system and even bad sectors, or even a highly fragmented page file. If the page file is messed up in any way from this it will cause the memory in that bad location to fault. Either killing the program or blue screening windows all together. This is no different than having bad memory. The hard drive just simply is a very large price to pay. When users use CleanMem and the page file usage is reduced, we also reduce the chances of the crashes caused from the page file. So in turn things "appear" more stable. But the programs themselves are no more stable than they where before. They are simply more stable by avoiding (In my opinion, the death trap) of the page file. From a programmers point, a program doesn't know if the memory it is using is in the physical memory or the page file. Did I explain this correctly? lol -Shane

Makes me happy knowing you guys like my work. I care about my work and take a lot of pride in it. Which I hope shows in all my programs and support. Treat people right, they will treat you the same. :-D It is a double edge sword though. Caring so much about my work means I take things said about it to heart. And stress about things I really shouldn't stress about lol. Shane

That always makes me feel great :-) Sometimes I wish I didn't care so much what people think of my work, because I take it to heart. I was on another forum fighting my geeky heart out defending cleanmem. Bugs me when a user doesn't try it and bashes it. A little history on CleanMem may help understand why I made it in the first place. About 4 years ago, XP days. I got a new customer (I run my own computer repair business for 9 years now) This new customer had some old dell machines with only 512mb ram on some and 1 GB on others. They where all running autocad. They would complain how slow the system was when using it. The memory was being maxed and the page file was being used heavily. Being a programmer and wanting to make my customer happy and happy with me I went looking for an answer and fix. I had used the SetWorkingSetSize on my cs fire monitor program. I wondered if that could be applied to other processes. So I used that API first and made cleanmem at home and tested it. With the goal of getting the page file to be used less. Well that api didnt work. The page file was growing with it. Crap I thought. The I found the EmptyWorkingSet. Ok lets see how this does. Hhmmm... Doesn't remove as much memory, but the page file didnt grow! Ok lets do it. Made CleanMem, and put it on my customers computers. I was shocked when a week later they told me what ever I did was great, autocad had never ran so fast and stable. Autocad not needing the page file is what made it faster. And no, I couldn't talk them into more memory, these old dells had a max memory limit of 1gb! So for 2 years I put this on every single one of my customers computers. All of them never having memory problems or page file slow downs. I was happy with this little tool. Gave me an edge over other local techs. Then 2 years ago when I started pcwintech.com I need programs on it to get it started. I put CleanMem out. Sent it over to Tim & Jim over at major geeks (These are great guys by the way). Tim comes back and says forget it. We haven't added a memory cleaner on here for years. I said I know what you mean, would you be willing to just try it? Tim did, and was shocked, majorgeeks added cleanmem to their site :-) Since then I have had users who have had it help them a lot. And the more powerful your machine the less of an impact. I have also had to defend it, because as Tim warned me, your walking into a hell fire of a debate on the net over this. he wasn't kidding :-) Shane

I call EmptyWorkingSet http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682606%28v=vs.85%29.aspx Which DOES not move to the page file, SetProcessWorkingSetSize does how ever move to the page file. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686234%28v=vs.85%29.aspx The key to realize between these two is this. On EmptyWorkingSet "Removes as many pages as possible" Windows will remove what it can, doesn't force. Where as SetProcessWorkingSize will force "Sets the minimum and maximum working set sizes for the specified process." When I tested both SetProcessWorkingSize page the page file grow like mad. What the EmptyWorkingSet does do is push to the Standby List. Which is in memory and keeps from hitting the drive. http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/E/7/7E7662CF-CBEA-470B-A97E-CE7CE0D98DC2/MemorySizingGuidanceWin7.docx "Standby List The Standby list contains unmodified pages that have been removed from process working sets, which effectively makes the Standby list a cache. If a process needs a page that is on the Standby list, the memory manager immediately returns the page to its working set. All pages on the Standby list are available for memory allocation requests. If a process requests memory, the memory manager can take a page from the Standby list, initialize it, and allocate it to the calling process. This is called repurposing a page. Pages on the Standby list are often from recently used files. By keeping these pages on the Standby list, the memory manager reduces the need to read information from the disk. Disk reads can decrease system responsiveness." Now a system WILL NOT become faster because an app is using less memory. What the side effect of CleanMem is, is to keep windows from using the page file. Thus by not using the slow hard drive that much the system as a whole is more repsonsive. Thats all I was aiming for. And yes it does help with memory leaks. Also from my page I think I should also clarify, I am no memory expert. I am a tech who made a program to help my users. I did the research, made the program, then tested the crap out of it. So my backing and defending of my CleanMem program comes from the results I have seen with my own eyes. And what a lot of other users have seen as well. :-) -Shane