Internet Exporer Needs More Memory, How do I allocate it??? Options

[Zebulun James]

Thats exactly my question. I have the latest instalment (to my knowledge) of internet explorer 5, and I'll open a page and I'll get an error message saying something like, 'could not open certain things... try allocating more memory to explorer.'

What the stink?

Help Zeb

[PristineRec]

First off, find the application itself. If you don't know where it is, use Sherlock to search for it on your hard drive.

Make sure Explorer is not running.

Select the application in the Finder.

Hold down the Command key and hit the "I" key, this will bring up the "get info" windoe for the file you have selected. (in this case, Internet Explorer"

There will be a dropdown menu in that window where you can select "Memory". I think the default posision of that dropdown is "general".

Under the "Memory" section, there are 2 fields, "Minimum" and "Preferred". This is the amount of RAM that the OS sets aside for Explorer to use, in Kilobytes. If you increase the Preferred number, more RAM will be allocated to Explorer whenever it is launched.

You may have to play with this number a bit to get a good balance between Explorer performance and Explorer hogging all the RAM and no other applications being able to run. Whatever amount you specify in that "Preferred" field can only be used by Explorer whenever Explorer is running, so if you plan to run othher apps at the same time, don't allocate too much of your RAM to explorer, or your other apps will start complaining that THEY don't have enough RAM to do things, or they won't even launch at all. Your system will alert you if there isn't wnough free RAM to run an app you are trying to launch.

While no apps are running, go up under the Apple menu and select "about this Macintosh". It will tell you how much RAM you have installed, how much RAM the Finder is using, ang how much RAM is still available. If you don't plan on running anything other than Explorer at one time, then allocate up to maybe 75% of that free RAM to Explorer. If you have tons of RAM, you probably won't need to allocate nearly that much. Try different memory settings with your apps until you get a good balance.