Out of Memory on Computer With 2GB of Memory

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

Mutliple applications like screensavers on a Windows 2000 server are
complaining about being out of memory on a Compaq W8000 workstation. There
are 2 GB of physical memory, and about 200 MB of that physical memory is in
use according to Task Manager. I assume that the type of memory here is
video memory. I'm using an ATI RADEON 9500 Pro with Catalyst 3.8 drivers.

What causes an out of memory condition for this video driver, and how do I
correct that?

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

Just to clarify, I'm assuming that the out of memory messages are not
messages about physical memory on the machine, but are errors from the video
driver indicating that there is not enough video memory for some operation.

 

[Yoggi]

Just to clarify, I'm assuming that the out of memory messages are not
messages about physical memory on the machine, but are errors from the video
driver indicating that there is not enough video memory for some operation.

I think it is talking about system memory and not video memory. You
have a misconfiguration somehwere. Did you disable the pagefile?

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

No, on the boot device there is a 256 MB page file, and on each of two
separate hard drive partitions there are 700 MB page files.

How could there possibly be a shortage of either virtual or real memory on a
machine with 2 GB of real memory and only 200 MB in use?

 

[Thomas]

No, on the boot device there is a 256 MB page file, and on each of two
separate hard drive partitions there are 700 MB page files.

How could there possibly be a shortage of either virtual or real
memory on a machine with 2 GB of real memory and only 200 MB in use?

Ask Sir Gates, it's his software...
I have the same problems in M$ applications like Office and stuff... i have
only 512 MB, but thats still more than enoughto run windows XP and MS Office
of course...

So; it's either a corrupt install, some driver problem, or whatever else ;-)

Thomas

 

[Todd Howard]

http://www.labmice.net/troubleshooting/memoryleaks.htm
Check the site out it might help....
TH

 

[Plissken]

Mutliple applications like screensavers on a Windows 2000 server are
complaining about being out of memory on a Compaq W8000 workstation. There
are 2 GB of physical memory, and about 200 MB of that physical memory is in
use according to Task Manager. I assume that the type of memory here is
video memory. I'm using an ATI RADEON 9500 Pro with Catalyst 3.8 drivers.

What causes an out of memory condition for this video driver, and how do I
correct that?

hi, the link below may help you with some low memory problems you are
having.

Plissken.

http://tweakhomepc.virtualave.net/ram/vcache.shtml

 

[Sept1967]

How many contradictions?

Multiple screensavers? (You only run a single screensaver at a time)

Windows 2000 server...on a Compaq workstation? (Which is it?)

Are you running a single Win2000 server, and have that pumping out the OS
and Data to multiple terminal server workstations?

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

These aren't very serious contradictions:

1) I run two applications that have the ability to control either wallpaper
or screensavers. I configure one of those for a screensaver and one of
those for a wallpaper tool. Both of them complain about running out of
memory. Based on previous links, I'm going to start monitoring private
bytes, pooled and nonpooled paging, for both the affected processes, and
across all processes.

2) Windows 2000 server is running on a Compaq Professional Workstation
W8000. Don't confuse a brand name of a computer with that of an operating
system.

Regarding your question: No terminal server sessions are involved, although
terminal services is enabled for administration purposes.

 

[Sept1967]

1) I run two applications that have the ability to control either
wallpaper

or screensavers. I configure one of those for a screensaver and one of
those for a wallpaper tool. Both of them complain about running out of
memory. Based on previous links, I'm going to start monitoring private
bytes, pooled and nonpooled paging, for both the affected processes, and
across all processes.

You should have more then enough horsepower running a (dual?) Xeon with 2Gb
of RDRAM.

What is the error....verbatim? If it is only the two apps having a problem,
then the problem is with those apps, not the video card.

 

[CHANGE USERNAME TO westes]

The verbatim message is "out of memory".

I agree that I should suspect the applications complaining of no memory, but
you can't rule out anything with such a twisted piece of software as
Windows, and it may be either a video driver or another badly behaved
service.

I started perfmon, and on one of the two affected applications, I started a
monitor of handle count, page pool, and nonpage pool memory. None of these
counters grew. The one application was able to install new wallpaper for
about 20 attempts. After that, it started throwing the out of memory
errors. During this timeframe, the three counters I was watching never
grew in any significant way.

Apparently there is some scarce resource being used up here, but I don't
know what it is.

 

[ammonton]

No, on the boot device there is a 256 MB page file, and on each of two
separate hard drive partitions there are 700 MB page files.
How could there possibly be a shortage of either virtual or real
memory on a machine with 2 GB of real memory and only 200 MB in use?

If a poorly coded program stores the amount of free memory as a signed
value, anything over 2GB will be interpreted as a negative value.
Try consuming enough memory so that the total amount of free physical +
swap is well below 2GB and see if the programs still complain.

-a