Where are my window handles?

[Mark Randall]

As of late I have been having a most annoying problem with regards to the
general usage of Vista:

I appear to be running out of window handles... I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 @
1.4Ghz with 2 gig of RAM and an additional 2GB of paging file space running
Vista Home Premium 32 bit, yet after a while programs start failing to
create windows, buttons, menus - the works.

Task Manager shows that IE (with google toolbar) has over 4,000 handles in
use, 35,000 for local session manager, 12,000 for service host, around 2,000
for MSN messenger and 1,500 for windows media player. In total the system
shows around 76,000 handles shared among 1070 threads / 82 processes. I also
have 2 remote desktop applications running.

Does anybody else have any experience with this? Ther kernel should be able
to produce far more windows than this before it starts complaining.

Any insights?

 

[Mark Randall]

I appear to be running out of window handles... I have a Core 2 Duo E6600
@ 1.4Ghz

Make that 2.4 Ghz.

 

[DP]

Tried running without the Google toolbar?

 

[keepout]

As of late I have been having a most annoying problem with regards to the
general usage of Vista:

I appear to be running out of window handles... I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 @
1.4Ghz with 2 gig of RAM and an additional 2GB of paging file space running
Vista Home Premium 32 bit, yet after a while programs start failing to
create windows, buttons, menus - the works.

Task Manager shows that IE (with google toolbar) has over 4,000 handles in
use, 35,000 for local session manager, 12,000 for service host, around 2,000
for MSN messenger and 1,500 for windows media player. In total the system
shows around 76,000 handles shared among 1070 threads / 82 processes. I also
have 2 remote desktop applications running.

Does anybody else have any experience with this? Ther kernel should be able
to produce far more windows than this before it starts complaining.

Well I always felt I was a power user, but you leave me in the dust.
as some comparison, and maybe you need to add some more info..here's someof my
stats.

Vista HP
*Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz CPU:0**Specification*Intel(R) Pentium(R) D
CPU 2.80GHz

2 gig ram - 1598/4308m page file
handles - 23056
threads - 942
processes 84

IE - toolbar [no google] 1055 handles
11 SVCHOST's 4-5000 handles.
MSN Messenger [on the scrap heap] don't use it.
windows media player 115 handles
local session manager - 263 handles

physical memory
Total - 2037, cached - 1038, free - 0

kernel memory
total - 251, paged - 188, non-paged 63.
Users - 1 Me.
network utilization 3.00%

Under processes, I have CPU
converter 9 - 15 %
TV 33 %, priority above normal
virus scan 22%
sidebar 0 - 23%

Also for some extra CPU management, I use XCPU and stick my memory hogs [TV,
Divx converter] on their own CPU. visibly it shows an unbalanced usage chart,
but it frees up CPU 0 for the rest of the system, minimizing the bogging.

I can get any window to quit responding normally just by tapping anywherein an
open window a 2nd time. Don't need to be over tasking the machine. Seems to
just be a Vista bug. smack a window a 2nd time, and it goes off to nowhere
until it freezes completely and crashes, or recovers.

But I can't say I've ever multitasked it to your limits [And I've had photoshop
8, MS access, the printer, TV, mail program, and several other memory hogs]
running at the same time, but never couldn't open another window. But then it
could all boil down to patience. If things start slowing down, I drink more
coffee, and have more bathroom and snack breaks while Vista catches up tome.
Patience for when a program quits responding. Vista's good at recovering from
the [not responding] two window taps, just slower than molasses in February.

Also MSN messenger & Google toolbar. IIRC Google toolbar is as bad as theVista
indexing service for disk and memory intensive usage.
Never could figure a use for MSN Messenger that I couldn't accomplish more
securely with email.

1st thing comes to mind with me is, just how many people are using that machine
at one time ? And which programs are memory hogs ? Also a GOOD virus scan.
Trend micro has house call. I've used Trend more than 9 years.

 

[Mark Randall]

You wrote:
1st thing comes to mind with me is, just how many people are using that
machine
at one time ? And which programs are memory hogs ? Also a GOOD virus scan.
Trend micro has house call. I've used Trend more than 9 years.

Hi,

Only I use it, and it is fairly well locked down. I do run quite a lot of
toys on it though, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Visual Studio 2005 etc, my
readings were taken when all but photoshop was shut down leaving me with
windows mail, wmp, PS and several MSN windows open.

Virus scanner is Avast 4.7 professional with all the latest databases.

Physical Mem:
- 2045 total
- 1107 cached
- 39 free

Kernel Mem:
- 286 total
- 192 paged
- 32 free

Page file:
2342 of 4314

Forgot to mention there are also around 95 services running, including IIS,
MSSQL Express, several avast services and all the other usual rubbish.

The computer usually handles it all well, I sometimes get to 25 tabs worth
in IE, photoshop, dreamweaver, a few instances of visual studio, media
player and several MSN conversations running at once and it doesnt effect it
appart from a bit of disk lag due to the disk being 400gb but only 7200
rpm...

Then on other occasions, like now, it decides that it doesnt not want to let
me create new windows.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

As of late I have been having a most annoying problem with regards to the
general usage of Vista:
I appear to be running out of window handles... I have a Core 2 Duo E6600
@ 1.4Ghz with 2 gig of RAM and an additional 2GB of paging file space
running Vista Home Premium 32 bit, yet after a while programs start
failing to create windows, buttons, menus - the works.
Task Manager shows that IE (with google toolbar) has over 4,000 handles in
use, 35,000 for local session manager, 12,000 for service host, around
2,000 for MSN messenger and 1,500 for windows media player. In total the
system shows around 76,000 handles shared among 1070 threads / 82
processes. I also have 2 remote desktop applications running.
Does anybody else have any experience with this? Ther kernel should be
able to produce far more windows than this before it starts complaining.

Hi Mark,

It's possible (maybe likely) that you have a handle leak on your system.
Those numbers look a little high; and certainly this isn't the common
experience across all Vista users. I'm assuming that these numbers appear
after teh system has been running for some time eg hours, or days? If you
reboot teh system they return to normal, and then steadily grow again?

The cause of the handle leak would depend on the type of handle. If the
excessive handles in each process were file handles, you may have a file
handle leak; if they were GDI objects, it would be a GDI leak; and so on.
The 2 most likely candidates are, in fact files and GDI.

File handle leaks are often caused by anti-virus applications and indexing
applications. GDI leaks are caused by faulty graphics drivers.

You can investigate the exact nature of the handles by using the "Handle"
utility from SysInternals:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/Handle.mspx

Run a command like "handle -a > myhandles.txt" to get a list of *all*
handles in all processes. If you run the command at various intervals and
compare the resulting output, you can determine the handles which seem to be
growing in number. This in turn leads you to the leak.

Hope it helps,

 

[keepout]

The computer usually handles it all well, I sometimes get to 25 tabs worth
in IE, photoshop, dreamweaver, a few instances of visual studio, media

just my experience, I've tried DW many times. But always back to GL.
In the most recent case. with DW3 trial, it promptly grabbed every piece of
memory real estate it could, locked itself up, and crashed about 32 java
things.
I uninstalled it immediately. I've never liked DW.

I wouldn't expect 25 tabs open to work at all.
1st thing goes when I'm accessing the web is the memory. Then everything else.
This isn't a vista thing. Accessing the web since win98 has put a drag on
things. IOW: Don't use the web if you want to do stuff offline. Either or, but
not both. That's where the MSN messenger comes in. Along with IE: