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Our program requires at least 25 % of your system resources to be free. If you run the program under Windows 95/98, you may get a message saying Not enough system resources to run the program. Close other applications and restart the program.Now there are xx system resources available. Program requires at least 25% system resources. Try closing other applications and restart the program.

Why does that happen?

The way Windows 9x/Me handles a small area of memory called System Resources is one of the biggest shortcomings of the Windows 9x/Me architecture. Every time you open an application, it loads all of its visual components, such as windows, menus, text boxes, buttons, checkboxes, and lists, into memory. Windows keeps track of the visual components of all the applications so that, for example, when you drag a window across the screen, it knows what was behind the window and is able to redraw it. These visual components are stored in System Resources. Regardless of the amount of physical memory installed in your computer and regardless of the number of open windows, the amount of memory allotted to System Resources never increases.

What's more, not all of the System Resources an application uses are released when the application is closed. So, you could open and close an application several times and actually run out of System Resources. That's why Windows may complain that you're out of memory, even when you have only two or three applications open.

The symptoms of low System Resources include slow performance, error messages when starting programs, application windows not updating properly, applications hanging, and the entire system crashing. The fix, at least as far as we lowly users are concerned, is to restart Windows. When Windows is restarted, the System Resources are cleared, and everything returns to normal.

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