   Those "free ram" progies
  This is something I never really thought about, but how do these kind of programs (like ram booster) work?..how are they able to access system wide memory that is outside the application's own memory space?Thanks.   
  I don't know how they specifically do it, but there are Win32 API functions (VirtualAllocEx,VirtualFreeEx,VirtualProtectEx,VirtualQueryEx,ReadProcessMemory,WriteProcessMemory...) that allows a process to access the virtual memory of another process, as long as is has the access rights.   ;  I'll take a look at those API calls....thanks.   ;  System wide memory can be accessed through a device driver, but tweaking the memory of the other running processes directly is like brain surgery and should be avoided. One approach is to adjust the working set of every process. The approach that a friend of mine that gives one of these toys away uses is much more simple than either of these. First he determines how much RAM is available on the system, then he proceeds in a loop to allocate that much memory in large chunks with each pass. With that done he releases the allocation. The idea behind this is that it forces the operating system to page out the memory used by other processes. It's not a great solution, but it's easier and safer than brain surgery or tweaking working sets.;  They don't free any RAM. They forces the OS to swap out the memory currently used by the applicatios, that's it.   ;Quote:Original post by Anonymous PosterThey don't free any RAM. They forces the OS to swap out the memory currently used by the applicatios, that's it.Pretty much what he said. They just load a bunch of trash into memory and then dump it forcing the OS to swap out memory. Then only memory that needs to be swapped back actually gets swapped back. The same thing can be done by opening a image editor and loading a really really large image.   ;  Or you could just leave your data in ram, instead of forcing it down to the page file. That way, you might just be able to get decent performance too...   ;Quote:Original post by SpoonbenderOr you could just leave your data in ram, instead of forcing it down to the page file. That way, you might just be able to get decent performance too...I second this, NEVER use ram boosters (or registry fixers for that matter), doing that will only slow your computer down (similar to having had a memory monster go rampage or had your computer on for days), Windows is pretty intelligent at swapping out useless stuff, forcing swapping like these applications always satisfies the happy hacker as he now has "more" memory free but infact he just made is computer slower for some duration until most has been swapped back. But these never add anything to longterm performance.My personal favorite among these are the memory defragmenters. ;)   ;  Remember, free memory is wasted memory. The system knows what it's doing, let it use all of your memory if it needs to.   