Best Free Memory Optimizer

 

Introduction

Windows (XP and Vista) has excellent memory management and for the most part you don't need a third party memory management product. I've tried a few free memory managers but none has impressed me enough to allow recommendation. Until now that is.

Most people believe that Memory Optimizers are nothing but "Snake Oil". And, that is mostly true. Most memory optimizers simply fill up memory in windows, and force everything to the page file. However, there a couple that seem to actually work.

Discussion

ClearMem I've got to talk about this little program that another category editor told me about.  I've been running it now for several months and I've got to say that I almost forgot about it.  You never notice it other than you eventually notice that your system is running smoother and faster.  After installation, you don't even realize that it is working. The program will install and set it to run every 30 min via the windows task scheduler. You can change this to any amount of time you like by simply going to the task scheduler in windows and changing any of the options you like.
Install it and your done! The program doesn't run in the back ground, once it does its job it closes and doesn't run again until the task scheduler runs it.  The program is very simple to operate as it will run and clean the memory out of all processes it can, without any user input.

This doesn't work like other memory cleaners that do nothing but force windows to free up memory by using up all the avail. memory.  This old trick then causes your system to lag big time!

CleanMem has just been upgraded to version 1.4.2.  Cleanmem now also clears the file cache of the system, the same way CacheSet does ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897561.aspx ).  So now when Cleanmem runs, both the processes and the file cache are cleaned; recovering even more memory and performance. Again now, you wont see tons of performance on a normally running system, but it does keep things in shape. Just like Cleanmem always has.

FreeRAM XP is a memory manager that not only works but also doesn't seem to cause problems; a rare combination. It ticks away in the background, consumes few resources, and does genuinely free up a bit of memory when you ask it to. It can also be configured to automatically free up memory.

Does freeing up memory improve performance? On both my test system and personal laptop it certainly did release some more memory, but it didn't make much difference to performance. Still, all my systems are XP and have 1GB plus. Maybe on older PCs with less memory, or when using applications like PhotoShop that eat up a lot of memory it may make a difference, I can't say. What I can say is that FreeRAM XP caused no problems other than a 10-30 second freeze of my PC when FreeRAM is in the actual process of releasing memory.