Memory

Today was one of those days when my computer and I were not seeing eye to eye. For no apparent reason, it would decide to freeze up and then dreaded message "You have preformed an Illegal Operation" would appear across my screen. That same "pit in the stomach" feeling that occurs when I'm stopped by the Highway Patrol usually follows.

Why do these illegal operations occur anyway? An illegal operation is typically the result of inadequate memory. I have 128 megabytes of Ram, yet I still get Illegal Operations … what gives?

When we type in a new document in our computers, the application we use stores the data in a temporary file until we save it permanently to a disk. This temporary file is stored in memory. The application (let's use Word) is supposed to delete the temporary document after we have saved and closed the file. However, some days, Word just doesn't want to let go. On these days, when we save and close, it looks as if everything is okay, but Word has not let go of the memory.

We now move on to our next project, not realizing that Word is holding on to memory. When we open a new program and begin a task, we will see the dreaded "Illegal Operation" at the most inconvenient time,

So, what can we do?

First, shut down your machine. Use the Shut down command from the Start Menu and turn the power off. This means no green lights should appear on the computer. Don't just use the reset button or Cntl-Alt-Del. These only close down Windows clearing only part of memory. There is a second level of memory on the motherboard that must also be cleared. This is accomplished by actually turning off the power. That's why it is recommended that you turn your computer off once a day … to clear the memory.

If you find the problem is still occurring, run your maintenance programs. These include Disk Cleanup, Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter. All of these can be found on your Start Menu under Program>Accessories>System Tools. Disk cleanup will delete unnecessary files from your machine including "Temporary files" these are the files created to store your documents before saving. They could be the glitch.

Next, run Scandisk. This will check your disk drive for corruption and errors… by the way, if it's difficult to run you may have a hard drive problem, so be prepared.

Finally, run the Disk Defragmenter. Often, the documents we save are stored on various part of our hard drive making it difficult to retrieve from our computer. The Defragmenter puts them back together again. It also rearranges the stored data for fast access.

All these programs are simple to run, but may take a few minutes. Run them frequently and you'll get much better performance. By the way, know how much memory you have. These days, anything under 64 megabytes of Ram is too little. Right click on My Computer and choose Properties. You'll see how much you have. If you don't have enough … off to the store!