I’ve recently been teaching myself html, and am currently putting together a webpage on my computer. I have been writing the source code on Notepad, and viewing the html file in IE6.
While i’m doing this, i have three things open. I have an IE window, that i use to browse the internet; i have an IE window that holds my webpage-in-progress; and i have the Notepad window into which i write the source code.
Much of what i’m doing right now involves creating links to other pages on the web. To do this, i copy the url from the address bar in IE, and paste it into the appropriate place in the html tags in Notebook.
The problem is that, after i’ve done this a few times, when i try to paste a url into Notepad it won’t allow me to do it, and i get a message that says something like “There is not enough memory to complete this operation. Shut down some other programs to free up more memory.”
I find it hard to believe that a simple copy-and-paste operation is screwing up my memory. Furthermore, when i go into control panel and look in the System area, it says that i have anywhere between 45 and 65% of my memory free (this has happened a few times). Also, if i try to open other programs or windows (Photoshop, more IE windows, etc.) they seem to work fine–the problem seems to be only in Notepad.
I even tried restarting the computer, but the problem persists.
You didn’t say how much RAM you actually have or what op sys you are using. Is virtual memory enabled? If you have 64MB and Win98, you will be running out of RAM pretty soon if not.
And the “System Resources” value in CP is not the amount of available RAM. It is a special-purpose area of finite size (in 98). It should be a low value, but it is not your problem here.
Try using System Monitor (sysmon.exe) to see what’s happening. Try enabling virtual memory. (CP->System->Performance->virtual) The default settings should be fine.
IIRC, sysmon ends up in your c:\windows directory, and it is optional during installation. I believe you can go into control panel, add/remove programs, and go into windows settings and add it from there. It will of course ask you for the CD.
How much stuff do you have running on startup? You can use msconfig to weed through all the stuff that starts when you boot. Clear alot of that stuff out and it should help.
You sure it said to shut down other programs? Sounds more like you ran into the sadly low file size limit in Notepad. IIRC, it got fixed in 2k and XP, but all others are stuck if the file is > 64k.
Yes, it’s bizarre, but I’ve also seen that message when Notepad starts to freak out. I believe the file-size limit is actually only ~32k characters, but there may be others (like a line count limit) that cause trouble also.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Win NT 4.0 had a superior no-limit Notepad program waaay back in 1996, but Windows 98 and Windows ME didn’t get it, for some reason.
You can copy the notepad.exe file from an NT/2000/XP box onto a 98/ME box, and it will run fine. However, may I suggest Metapad, a free Notepad replacement with no file size limits and many other useful features?
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. It does seem, indeed, to be a problem with the Notepad file size, because the only program where i get the memory message is in Notepad. Not only that, but the massage only appears when i’m editing that particular notepad document, which is by far the biggest notepad document that i have.
I have actually moved all the text over to a Word document, which i have saved in text-only format, and this seems to be working fine. I might, however, give Lagged2Death’s Metapad suggestion a try.
I am able to open a 48K text file in Notepad, but not a 78K one. I think the file size limit is 64K, but you may be right about line count limits as well.
Notepad’s limits, inherited from the 1980’s, are a good example of how forward-thinking Microsoft is. There are many better editors out there, some with useful features for programmers, and you can always fall back on Word.
