Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
Labeled RamDisk (R:).

It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.

Cannot figure out where it comes from.

Physical RAM is 3G total.
No Disk in CD.
4G SD card installed and shows data on it.
No uSB drives plugged in.

How is it there ?

Is there an app that will show what is loaded into RAM ?
Phyical Available RAM is 400 megabytes. Yes, megabytes.
Page File 4.8GB.
Page File Available 1.7G.

On 10/16/2022 10:11 PM, Roberta wrote:
> Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
> Labeled RamDisk (R:).
>
> It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.
>
> Cannot figure out where it comes from.
>
> Physical RAM is 3G total.
> No Disk in CD.
> 4G SD card installed and shows data on it.
> No uSB drives plugged in.
>
> How is it there ?
>
> Is there an app that will show what is loaded into RAM ?
> Phyical Available RAM is 400 megabytes.  Yes, megabytes.
> Page File 4.8GB.
> Page File Available 1.7G.

You might start in Control Panels : Add/Remove and
see if any suspicious programs are loaded.

I use free OSFMount here, and the other machine uses a licensed
copy of DataRAM RAMDisk. Both are likely to leave entries
in Add/Remove.

And there are more of those. It took a long time, before
people started writing that code in earnest. The early
RAMDisks were sucky, because they were tiny and useless. And
Microsoft wrote a "sample program" -- people were copying
the sample program and not adding any value to it, which is
why it took so long until a real effort was made to write
a good one.

A typical limit today is 64GB. I don't know if any of those
programs will support more RAM than that. (There was a recent
desktop board that supports 1TB of RAM, so that's why you would
want to know about that.)

The early DataRAM RAMDisk offered a max of 4GB RAMDisk for free.
It was larger quantities of RAM that required purchasing a license.

Later on, DataRAM reduced the capability of the program to 1GB RAMDisk
for free. Making it unattractive.

One particular version of DataRAM was also attractive, because
it allowed WinXP to use 8GB of RAM total. The DataRAM driver
level code could use PAE memory, and memory used by drivers
does not count towards the WinXP memory license limit. You could
have 3GB of RAM for programs, and 4GB of RAM for a RAMDisk, and
that's what I did on my now-dead WinXP machine. Very nice.
A RAMdisk is great as a scratch disk, for unpacking Firefox
source, doing text searches and so on.

Paul

I would like to shut it down but cannot find how or were to do so.

Properties gives me no hints.

Paul wrote:
> On 10/16/2022 10:11 PM, Roberta wrote:
>> Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
>> Labeled RamDisk (R:).
>>
>> It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.
>>
>> Cannot figure out where it comes from.
>>
>> Physical RAM is 3G total.
>> No Disk in CD.
>> 4G SD card installed and shows data on it.
>> No uSB drives plugged in.
>>
>> How is it there ?
>>
>> Is there an app that will show what is loaded into RAM ?
>> Phyical Available RAM is 400 megabytes.  Yes, megabytes.
>> Page File 4.8GB.
>> Page File Available 1.7G.
>
> You might start in Control Panels : Add/Remove and
> see if any suspicious programs are loaded.
>
> I use free OSFMount here, and the other machine uses a licensed
> copy of DataRAM RAMDisk. Both are likely to leave entries
> in Add/Remove.
>
> And there are more of those. It took a long time, before
> people started writing that code in earnest. The early
> RAMDisks were sucky, because they were tiny and useless. And
> Microsoft wrote a "sample program" -- people were copying
> the sample program and not adding any value to it, which is
> why it took so long until a real effort was made to write
> a good one.
>
> A typical limit today is 64GB. I don't know if any of those
> programs will support more RAM than that. (There was a recent
> desktop board that supports 1TB of RAM, so that's why you would
> want to know about that.)
>
> The early DataRAM RAMDisk offered a max of 4GB RAMDisk for free.
> It was larger quantities of RAM that required purchasing a license.
>
> Later on, DataRAM reduced the capability of the program to 1GB RAMDisk
> for free. Making it unattractive.
>
> One particular version of DataRAM was also attractive, because
> it allowed WinXP to use 8GB of RAM total. The DataRAM driver
> level code could use PAE memory, and memory used by drivers
> does not count towards the WinXP memory license limit. You could
> have 3GB of RAM for programs, and 4GB of RAM for a RAMDisk, and
> that's what I did on my now-dead WinXP machine. Very nice.
> A RAMdisk is great as a scratch disk, for unpacking Firefox
> source, doing text searches and so on.
>
>    Paul

On 10/17/2022 4:04 AM, Roberta wrote:
>
> I would like to shut it down but cannot find how or were to do so.
>
> Properties gives me no hints.

Control Panels : Add/Remove

Should take you, like, 30 seconds to find it.

Tracing it using Device Manager, wmic diskdrive, that's
going to take too long.

Paul

On 17/10/2022 03:11, Roberta wrote:
> Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
> Labeled RamDisk (R:).
>
> It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.
>
> Cannot figure out where it comes from.
>
> Physical RAM is 3G total.
> No Disk in CD.
> 4G SD card installed and shows data on it.
> No uSB drives plugged in.
>
> How is it there ?
>
> Is there an app that will show what is loaded into RAM ?
> Phyical Available RAM is 400 megabytes.  Yes, megabytes.
> Page File 4.8GB.
> Page File Available 1.7G.
>
>
There will, by definition, be no permanent data on it. A RAM disc is an
area of RAM set up to behave like a disk so that you can temporarily
copy stuff to it which requires fast access.

This RAM disc is being automatically created every time you boot up your
system. You need to find what's creating it, and zap it.
--
Cheers,
Roger

On 10/17/2022 8:30 AM, Roger Mills wrote:
> On 17/10/2022 03:11, Roberta wrote:
>> Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
>> Labeled RamDisk (R:).
>>
>> It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.
>>
>> Cannot figure out where it comes from.
>>
>> Physical RAM is 3G total.
>> No Disk in CD.
>> 4G SD card installed and shows data on it.
>> No uSB drives plugged in.
>>
>> How is it there ?
>>
>> Is there an app that will show what is loaded into RAM ?
>> Phyical Available RAM is 400 megabytes.  Yes, megabytes.
>> Page File 4.8GB.
>> Page File Available 1.7G.
>>
>>
> There will, by definition, be no permanent data on it. A RAM disc is an area of RAM set up to behave like a disk so that you can temporarily copy stuff to it which requires fast access.
>
> This RAM disc is being automatically created every time you boot up your system. You need to find what's creating it, and zap it.

Implying a Startup item (msinfo32.exe : Software Environment : Startup Programs)

or a scheduled task entry (taskschd.msc : Display All Running Tasks (right hand column area) ).

Clicking Task Scheduler Library on the left in taskschd.msc, should give a summary.
I notice on mine, the fleet of NVidia items is missing, because most of the
install package was not installed by me this time.

*******

Another way to do the review you recommend, is via Autoruns.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

Many of the Sysinternals collection, no longer run on WinXP.
But because that web page has no "list of supported OSes",
perhaps it will work. My WinXP machine died, so I can no longer
(easily) test. I have to use a VM to test, and my VM fleet
isn't very healthy these days either.

Paul

Going back to my original asked question is there a memory app for Win
XP that will show what is in memory ?
Sysinternals seems only to have only a memory viewer app that works with
Vista+
Nirsoft seems not to have one either.

I have found the RamDisk and shut it off. It is a MS product that must
have been included with Win XP Pro original OS.

Roberta wrote:
> Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
> Labeled RamDisk (R:).
>
> It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.
>
> Cannot figure out where it comes from.
>
> Physical RAM is 3G total.
> No Disk in CD.
> 4G SD card installed and shows data on it.
> No uSB drives plugged in.
>
> How is it there ?
>
> Is there an app that will show what is loaded into RAM ?
> Phyical Available RAM is 400 megabytes.  Yes, megabytes.
> Page File 4.8GB.
> Page File Available 1.7G.
>
>

On 10/17/2022 1:30 PM, Roberta wrote:
>
> Going back to my original asked question is there a memory app for Win XP that will show what is in memory ?
> Sysinternals seems only to have only a memory viewer app that works with Vista+
> Nirsoft seems not to have one either.
>
> I have found the RamDisk and shut it off.  It is a MS product that must have been included with Win XP Pro original OS.

Does it have a name ?

We like to know these things.

We're weird that way.

Say another user comes by with your question a year from now.
If we know the name of the application, we can tell people
what to look for.

Paul

On Mon, 17 Oct 2022 13:55:25 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid>
wrote:

>On 10/17/2022 1:30 PM, Roberta wrote:
>>
>> Going back to my original asked question is there a memory app for Win XP that will show what is in memory ?
>> Sysinternals seems only to have only a memory viewer app that works with Vista+
>> Nirsoft seems not to have one either.
>>
>> I have found the RamDisk and shut it off.  It is a MS product that must have been included with Win XP Pro original OS.
>
>Does it have a name ?
>
>We like to know these things.
>
>We're weird that way.
>
>Say another user comes by with your question a year from now.
>If we know the name of the application, we can tell people
>what to look for.
>
> Paul

I'm using XP Pro. I'd like to know this, too.

Roberta wrote:
> Win XP Pro laptop has a 1.99G RAM Disk in Explorer.
> Labeled RamDisk (R:).
>
> It has one folder TEMP at startup and is empty.
>
> Cannot figure out where it comes from.

https://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/usbdriveinfo.zip

Select the left-most tab "Volumes", right-click the
R: volume and select "Copy report from here".

Information is now in the Windows Clipboard.

Paste the clipboard content here into a new message
(press Ctrl+V).

The infomation might give us hive a hint which software
created the ramdisk.

Uwe

Device Manager Shows
RamDisk
Ramdisk

Can enable or disable and set ramdisk size.
Mentions Microsoft as provider.
No more info there.

Tried to Enable but got a blue screen of death.

Device Manager shows
RamDisk
Ramdisk Driver

RamDisk Properties shows
Ramdisk

Ramdisk Driver Properties shows
General
Device type: RamDisk
Manufacturer: Microsoft

Device Status
This device is disabled (Code 22)
Click Enable Device to enable this device.
Driver
Driver Provider Microsoft

Tried to enable but blue screen of death
Booted and RamDisk was installed and enabled.

Disable it again and it did go way without incident.

On 10/19/2022 10:45 AM, Roberta wrote:
> Device Manager shows
> RamDisk
>    Ramdisk Driver
>
> RamDisk Properties shows
>    Ramdisk
>
> Ramdisk Driver Properties shows
>    General
>       Device type:  RamDisk
>       Manufacturer: Microsoft
>
>       Device Status
>            This device is disabled (Code 22)
>            Click Enable Device to enable this device.
>     Driver
>        Driver Provider Microsoft
>
> Tried to enable but blue screen of death
> Booted and RamDisk was installed and enabled.
>
> Disable it again and it did go way without incident.
>
>

https://www.codeguru.com/windows/ramdisk-version-1-0-for-windows-2000-windows-xp/

"Environment: Windows 2000/XP, VS.NET, XP-DDK

This software consists of a RAM disk driver (RAMDisk.sys),
an Installer/Property sheet provider (RAMDisk.dll), and an installation file
(RAMDisk.inf), which together form an installable RAM disk on Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

The driver is almost identical to the Microsoft sample driver (See KB Article Q257405).
The installer/property sheet provider DLL, however, adds additional possibilities to
change the drive letter and disk size in a more user-friendly way, using the
device manager. This makes this package almost mature enough to concur with
other RAM disk products on the market. <cough>
"

That means you could check for the presence of files of
that name, which would tell you the mechanism used.

Ordinary RAMDisk software (third-party branding), may use
an Add/Remove entry to do the job. In some cases, the claimed
provider could still be "Microsoft", if they abuse the
sample driver kit and just recompile it or something.
That's why I'm not allowed to jump to any conclusions,
based on the information presented in this particular case.
It might not actually be the Microsoft driver. We don't
know for sure, because it can be (unintentionally) faked.

However, if you go back in history far enough,
you end up dealing with the Microsoft sample driver.
I used some of this crap, 20+ years ago. Like on WIn2K perhaps,
but nothing back then could make a 2GB RAMDrive. 128MB or 256MB
might have been the limit at the time.

Apparently that sample driver is closer to a "Device Manager Only" installer,
using an INF as if it was a hardware device. Right clicking an
INF gives the option "Install" in File Explorer, and away you go.

You should see evidence of this in C:\Windows\INF .

If you used Agent Ransack search, and searched the contents of the
folder for the word "ramdisk", then you are likely to get two hits
at least. There might be an OEMxx.inf file that the system created,
and that too is evidence someone installed RAMDisk.inf on this system.

When a person creates an INF, they are supposed to put the "real file name"
inside the INF file, in text form. When the OS makes a fake name for
the file, by slapping OEMxx.inf onto it as the file name, the word
"Ramdisk" is still inside the file, for us to find it with a content
search of C:\Windows\INF .

Using the Device Manager -- Device Disable in the Properties of the device,
should solve the problem. Eliminating it entirely is outside my pay scale :-)

Paul