How much memory for "Overhead"

Having nothing to do today and trying to speed up my computer, I checked how much memory I had under system info. As expected, my physical memory was 384 megs. But my "Available Free Memory" was listed as only 124 meg. I restarted under Safe Mode, and had 237 meg. This was still far below the 384 I would have expected.

I checked the running processes and got a bunch of letters and numbers and stuff (OK, it looked real, but I don't know what csrss.exe does. I imagine from the name that svchost.exe comunicates with other parts of my system. (Service host?) But why do I have 8 or 10 of them running?

Is there a place I can find out what all this means, and which are safe to end, or not start in the first place.

By the way, I run spyware, adware, virus protection, and so forth, and clean regularly, and find nothing when I clean.

Alex

Here you go Alex... HAVE FUN! 8)
By the way, remember that the OS and the running processes NEED memory in order to run, and you'll never have the FULL amount of memory available, no matter what you do... ("Safe Mode" STILL loads the OS and some processes)

http://www.tasklist.org/

http://www.processlibrary.com/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056/en-us
This will give you the real information on Svchost.exe.
The one link said it was a trojan and this is false. It might be replace by a trojan, but it is a part of the Windows opperation system.

Hi all,

I realize that it will need something, but 230 Meg of overhead (The difference between 384 total physical memory and 147 or so) seems a lot. Jarno's answer that his 2.0Gig system has only 1.5 left means, though, that I am in relatively good shape. If I had his overhead, I couldn't start at all--or it would be off in virtual memory......Come to think of it, maybe some of my overhead is off in virtual memory--I just don't realize it.

Well, I think I'll go off and try your sources and see what happens. If you don't hear from me, I guess my computer has blown up........

Alex