WinXP Clear Memory | Houston Web Design

Clear Your PC Memory The Easy Way!

Posted on: December 18, 2007 — 32 Comments

If you’re a designer using a pc platform then you know that most of the image editing software you use eats up your computer’s resources. (Stop laughing MAC users) Especially if you have about 6 to 8 different applications running at the same time, depending on your computer’s specs, running all these applications at the same time will often cause the pc to lock up or shut down on its own.

So what do you do when you start to notice that your pc is bogging down? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple button you can click on to clear out your computer’s memory? WinXP doesn’t have that button but that shouldn’t stop us from making our very own clear memory button. This is really simple so let’s get to it…

First thing you need to do is right-click anywhere on your desktop, click on New, click on Shortcut. This will bring up the Create Shortcut wizard, copy and paste the following into the location text box:

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

Click Next – Now name it whatever you want, I suggest naming in “Clear Memory” and click Finish.

And that’s it, you should see an icon called Clear Memory on your desktop. Whenever your computer hangs when you’re using your apps simply click this button and your computer memory will be cleared w/o having to restart completely…pretty nifty huh?

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26 Comments for "Clear Your PC Memory The Easy Way!"

This fix works like a charm, The only problem i found with my computer not the fix. Is that once i clear it i check taskmanager and my physical just falls to something like 4-11, I assume this happens on startup but with this I’m able to see it fall. And I’m not running any programs besides WinVistaOS and basic drivers and a few basic programs that aren’t hogging memory…
——————————–
|PHYSICAL MEMORY(MB) |
|Total=1982 |
|Cached=1336 |
|Free=0 |
|PHYSICAL MEMORY=59%|
———————————
Is this perhaps a glitch???
I would be thankful for some information if someone happens to figure this one out.

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BlockCop — October 18, 2011
thanks for the tip! i have no problem with memory i use linax

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iqbal — September 17, 2011
Works like a charm!! This solved a problem that I have been dealing with for some time now. THANK YOU!!!

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Mukashi — August 17, 2011
What a fantastic roundup! I have always been a huge fan of No. 1 Website Design and I find your style of writing to be absolutely harmonious. Keep up the amazing topics; I look forward to checking these out in the near future

As you can see it is all work in progress – I will be tweaking it up and blogging the modifications I made

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venkatesan — June 15, 2011
I have “The file…rundll32.exe cannot be found”
What do I do?

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Nath — November 22, 2010
doesnt work in windows 7..and i cant find anything that does

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Dylan Replied:
January 1st, 2011 at 4:00 am
That it is actually false, well mabye, depending on your version. My Dell XPS 400 is running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and is compatible with many things x86, and I have it.

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BOOBS — August 30, 2010
Really useful material. When I see the screen shots, I have faith.

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nash — August 16, 2010
Could be good. I have delayed so long because of not being sure how to do this that it will take all night, but here goes.

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byron — August 16, 2010
Nice tip. Really useful. thanks

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clarence walsh — August 16, 2010
I just see that someone said it doesn’t work on windows 7. Keep the windows 7 anyway. I “upgraded” to windows 8 and had compatibility problems with many installed programs, Camtasia as an example.

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byron dade — August 16, 2010
That is really good. I have struggled to get where you got. Thanks.

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vlad stravinsky — August 16, 2010
Did not work on Windows Vista.

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Anthony — July 8, 2010
Really it was very informative post on the memory clearing.MY computer was very slow and some time it freezes too but your tips has given has helped me a lot.

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custom men's dress shirt — May 15, 2010
I totally agree with you . Dust are the main reason for the damage of the computer fan. And also it make the computer look dirty from the inside.I always had a problem in cleaning the dust.

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sexy lingerie — April 28, 2010
I find many web pages suggesting this as a method of clearing a memory. Though not sure whether it really clears the memory or not.So I pushed my computer off the desk.

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Dulles airport hotel — April 26, 2010
Windows XP has many tricks like this. Virtually you can make shortcut for any procedure you want to follow. This can be beneficiary while dealing with applications that eat up huge memory.

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Nathan Replied:
April 12th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Is the shortcut the same for Windows 2000 Professional? I still use it and like it a lot, and can see the benefit of being able to do this.

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Computer Ram Upgrades — April 12, 2010
XP has a number of processes that normally run during idle time every 3 days. This command runs them now. It does not clear memory. Looking at Task Manager while it is running will quickly show this. In any event clearing memory is a bad idea. Free memory is wasted memory and the enemy of performance.

Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA

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NONSENSE — October 14, 2009
Thanks. Great tip.

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Zee — December 23, 2008
Is there a similar thing for Windows 2000?

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Nathan — November 24, 2008
mY COMPUTER HAS COMPLETELY CRASHED, SO I CANT EVEN GET TO THE DESKTOP, NOR SAFE MODE. I ONLY GET THE BLUE BACKGROUND WITH ALL THOSE SILLY WHITE WRITINGS. MYCOMPUTER WAS INFECTED WITH VIRUSES AND NOW I CANT EVEN REMOVE THEM SO HOW CAN I CLEAR MY COMPUTER AND REPLACE THE OS

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Napoleon Replied:
July 21st, 2010 at 9:43 am
Darling, if your computer has “completely crashed”, how ever did you get here? Also, KEEP SHOUTING! (200 years and death changes nothing…)

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Josephine — November 6, 2008
This is a great tip… I need to do a reinstall soon but this will buy me a couple more months of time

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Dan — October 4, 2008
If your pc is frozen, how are you going to click on a desktop shortcut when you can’t even move the cursor or minimize to get to the desktop?

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Jon B Replied:
August 25th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
If your pc is completely frozen and won’t do anything it’s probably not a system memory issue.

I would boot up in safe mode, and start cleaning out my pc by uninstalling programs I no longer use.

I would also run a spyware program.

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BlockCop Replied:
October 18th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Anti-Spyware program lol! sorry for grammar natzi

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PR — August 25, 2008
Lol, I had never thought of that. Nice tutorial.

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Rexibit Web Services — July 23, 2008
Thank you: GREAT

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Holger_Lang — June 15, 2008
This was a rather helpful tip, can you post more on troubleshooting WinXP??? Thank you.

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natural constipation relief — March 19, 2008
wow! thank you for the tip, it helped me restoring my pc without formating it

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pooja kashyap — January 29, 2008