50 windows open - problems

[anybody43]

Windows XP, 2G RAM, fancy PC HP XW6000.

This occurs on other equipment too.

When a large number of applications are used they start to missbehave.

Task manager won't open - cntrl-alt-del opens the
security window but task manager fails to launch with no
visible effect. System event log logs event 26
"Application popup: taskmgr.exe - Application Error : The application
failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate
the application."

Various apps have menus that won't work.
Clicking on task bar doesn't bring up application
list. e.g we have 41 copie of IE running but when I click
on the task bar IE Icon nothing happens.

Clearly we are out of some resource or other, memory?

Perfmon won't launch.

This is a real user problem however I have reproduced
something like it myself. We have users with 4 screens
that want a load of apps running.

Is there anything that can be done except to get
them two computers?

There appears to be sufficient real RAM available
however I suspect that some portion of it is
lacking.


On a 1G RAM system
Using perfmon remotely we get:

Available bytes: 300M
Cache bytes: 188M
Cache bytes peak: 300M
Free system page table entries:23,000
Pool non-paged bytes: 17.5M
Pool non-paged allocs: 70,000
Pool paged allocs: 97,000
Pool paged bytes: 59M

Taskmanager says:
Handles: 21645
Threads: 801
Processes: 110

Commit Charge:
total: 604M
Limit: 2.5G
Peak: 684M

Physical memory
total: 1G
available: 350M
system cache: 428M


Kernel memory
total: 74M
Paged: 57M
nonpaged: 17M


Which one is at the limit?

Thanks in advance.

 

[kurttrail]

Windows XP, 2G RAM, fancy PC HP XW6000.

This occurs on other equipment too.

When a large number of applications are used they start to missbehave.

Task manager won't open - cntrl-alt-del opens the
security window but task manager fails to launch with no
visible effect. System event log logs event 26
"Application popup: taskmgr.exe - Application Error : The application
failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate
the application."

Various apps have menus that won't work.
Clicking on task bar doesn't bring up application
list. e.g we have 41 copie of IE running but when I click
on the task bar IE Icon nothing happens.

Clearly we are out of some resource or other, memory?

Perfmon won't launch.

This is a real user problem however I have reproduced
something like it myself. We have users with 4 screens
that want a load of apps running.

Is there anything that can be done except to get
them two computers?

There appears to be sufficient real RAM available
however I suspect that some portion of it is
lacking.


On a 1G RAM system
Using perfmon remotely we get:

Available bytes: 300M
Cache bytes: 188M
Cache bytes peak: 300M
Free system page table entries:23,000
Pool non-paged bytes: 17.5M
Pool non-paged allocs: 70,000
Pool paged allocs: 97,000
Pool paged bytes: 59M

Taskmanager says:
Handles: 21645
Threads: 801
Processes: 110

Commit Charge:
total: 604M
Limit: 2.5G
Peak: 684M

Physical memory
total: 1G
available: 350M
system cache: 428M


Kernel memory
total: 74M
Paged: 57M
nonpaged: 17M


Which one is at the limit?

Thanks in advance.

Just keep it to 42, and that is the ultimate answer.

--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com/mscommunity
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei"

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

With 50 apps open at any one time, the CPU would be at the limit, hdd access
would be at the limit, video memory would be at the limit..

Do you not think that you are being a shade unrealistic?

 

[GO]

Exactly! I consider myself a power user and have can have tons of apps open
at any one time, but 50 just seems excessive. How can one be productive
what that much on the go? And why do they need that much open at once?

 

[Plato]

You missed April fools by exactly one month. Please set your date
correctly.

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

Windows XP, 2G RAM, fancy PC HP XW6000.

This occurs on other equipment too.

When a large number of applications are used they start to missbehave.

Task manager won't open - cntrl-alt-del opens the
security window but task manager fails to launch with no
visible effect. System event log logs event 26
"Application popup: taskmgr.exe - Application Error : The application
failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate
the application."

Various apps have menus that won't work.
Clicking on task bar doesn't bring up application
list. e.g we have 41 copie of IE running but when I click
on the task bar IE Icon nothing happens.

Clearly we are out of some resource or other, memory?

Perfmon won't launch.

This is a real user problem however I have reproduced
something like it myself. We have users with 4 screens
that want a load of apps running.

Is there anything that can be done except to get
them two computers?

Hi,

With default allocation values in the interactive desktop heap, you
e.g. cannot open more than 50 to 75 Explorer/Internet Explorer windows.

It is the registry value "Windows" under this key that defines the
allocation size:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\
\Session Manager\SubSystems\


The second number in this substring is the value that defines this size:

....SharedSection=1024,3072,512 ...


And from a previous post:

From: Willy Denoyette [MVP]
Subject: Re: System resource usage
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.performance
Date: 2003-12-01 14:59:51 PST

<quote>
User objects are allocated from the desktop heap which has a system
wide size of 48MB on W2K, this heap consists of three sharedsections,
the first is common to all desktops, the second is per interactive
desktop, and the third is reserved for non interactive desktops.

The values for the three distinct heaps is taken from the registry when
the CSRSS process starts
(see:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\SubSystems\Windows), what you could do is paly a little bit
with the values found in there taking care that the sum of all heaps
must fit into 48 MB!!!
</quote>

Before you think about editing that value, please read the two
following Knowledge Base articles carefully:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;184802

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;126962

 

[anybody43]

Direct hit, thanks a lot Torgeir Bakken (MVP). I had had a bit
of a search and could not find anything relevant but then I don't
do development which is where the info is targeted.

A wee note to those who say that these users should
change their behaviour. They disagree and they use
their computers to make money. 42 was good though)

If this could not have been fixed the solution would have been to
equip the users with more than one computer. This is obviously
costly and there is some loss of utility. (clipboard)
First level support were already pricing up more RAM to
increase the total to 4G from 2G however I did not think that
likely to help.


I am still not clear how many desktops the system uses. There are
three interactive ones mentioned in the various docs however it is
not stated under what circumstances there might be more.

You don't happen to know of a way of getting the current usage of
the relevant "system-wide 48-MB buffer"?


FYI I have found the following:-

In the following, the copies of IE were seperate instances created
with "start iexplore" from batch files for convenience. The behaviour
with using "File new window" was not measured however from my
own experience it does seem to be very similar.

On an XP PC with IE6 3072K allows 50 copies of IE and 4096K allows 68
copies.
This is an ALMOST EXACTLY linear relationship intersecting ZERO.

y = mx + c

Memory = 56.88 * number of IE + 1.08.

It therefore seems reasonable that an additional 1M will allow an
additional 18 copies of IE.

Note that THIS MEMORY is allocated from a pool of 48M which is a
system wide limit.
By default the system has 3 desktops so the memory needed seems to be:

1024 k is for all desktops
3072 is for each interactive desktop
512 is for all non interactive

By default the system has 3 desktops so the memory needed seems to be:

1024 + ( 3 * 3072 ) + 512 = 10752K or about 11M

This seems to imply that we have plenty of spare space.