new virtual memory errors

[Daave]

I usually have IE7, outlook express, quickbooks and excel open. Also
word, sometimes. I try to avoid opening other stuff without closing
something because this machine will get really slow...

Commit Charge (K) (freshly re-booted)
Total 635,160
Limit 1,277,428
Peak 668,356

The first six Processes, sorted by Peak Memory Usage:
Iexplore.exe 228,328 (peak), 217,848 (VM)
TeaTimer.exe (something to do with SpyBot) 181,040, 81,688
CCSVSCST.Exe 78,180, 24,860
msimn.exe 33,040, 18,248
svchost.exe 31,384, 15,424
hpqgalry.exe 24,828, 20,560

I have Norton Internet Security and SpyBot.

Norton hogs resources something fierce. Perhaps a recent update to it
has contributed to your sluggishness. You will probably be better off
uninstalling it and running a superiror antivirus program like NOD32,
Avast, or Avira (the last two are free). Also, you may need to use their
special removal tool:

http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

There must be one or more add-ons in Internet Explorer that are hogging
memory; your memory figures are quite high for it! For comparison, I am
looking at Task Manager here, and my values for iexplore.exe are:

Mem Usage : 50,948 K
Peak Mem Usage : 65,340 K
VM Size : 36,252 K

Try running IE in No Add-ons mode to see what your figures are. To do
this, right-click the IE desktop icon and select "Start Without
Add-ons."

Many have experience problems with TeaTimer, and your figures are *very*
high for it! You might want to disable it. (I would.)

Many people have correctly reported that *currently* you do not have
enough RAM for how you are using your PC. But the solution is not more
RAM. The solution is to address which of the above things I referenced
is contributing to your memory problems and specifically solve *those*
issues. Once you bring your Total and Peak figures down to their proper
levels, you will see you have plenty of RAM.

Also, you might want to do the following so that Windows manages your
Virtual Memory efficiently:

Here are the instructions you need, taken from
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837869 :

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.

3. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

4. On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.

5. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging
file that you want to change.

6. Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to select the System
managed size check box, and then click Set.

7. Click OK three times.

 

[Jose]

InJose typed on Tue, 19 May 2009 06:07:41 -0700 (PDT):






Hi Jose! My Gateway MX6124 laptop (both of them) will only allow
Hibernation mode to work only 50% of the time if anymore than 1GB is
installed. Sure is annoying. The performance of the laptop is about the
same between 1GB to 2GB anyway. And 99% of the time the system is using
less than 800MB of the RAM anyway. So I am one who complains about
having too much RAM.

Holy cow!

However, that sounds like a symptom of a different problem which would
require a little more investigation to resolve, unless you have
already thoroughly researched it and pinned down the culprit.

Jose

 

[Gerry]

Daave

We both agree that Norton Internet Security is not a good choice for
good system performance. We do not have the same views concerning Tea
Timer. What is not clear when you recommend disabling is whether you
feel real time malware protect is needed or unnecessary? You do not
suggest an alternative?

BTW I also agree the Internet Explorer figures are unusually high! In my
reply I commented on the effect of multi-tasking I do have some
reservations that it is possible to read too much into the peak figures.
These figures may occur for very short periods and therefore may not be
very representative of the overall effect on system performance. You
could apply the technique I siggested in my other post to measure the
impact of Internet Explorer with a selection of various Add Ons.


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I usually have IE7, outlook express, quickbooks and excel open. Also
word, sometimes. I try to avoid opening other stuff without closing
something because this machine will get really slow...

Commit Charge (K) (freshly re-booted)
Total 635,160
Limit 1,277,428
Peak 668,356

The first six Processes, sorted by Peak Memory Usage:
Iexplore.exe 228,328 (peak), 217,848 (VM)
TeaTimer.exe (something to do with SpyBot) 181,040, 81,688
CCSVSCST.Exe 78,180, 24,860
msimn.exe 33,040, 18,248
svchost.exe 31,384, 15,424
hpqgalry.exe 24,828, 20,560

I have Norton Internet Security and SpyBot.

Norton hogs resources something fierce. Perhaps a recent update to it
has contributed to your sluggishness. You will probably be better off
uninstalling it and running a superiror antivirus program like NOD32,
Avast, or Avira (the last two are free). Also, you may need to use
their special removal tool:

http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

There must be one or more add-ons in Internet Explorer that are
hogging memory; your memory figures are quite high for it! For
comparison, I am looking at Task Manager here, and my values for
iexplore.exe are:
Mem Usage : 50,948 K
Peak Mem Usage : 65,340 K
VM Size : 36,252 K

Try running IE in No Add-ons mode to see what your figures are. To do
this, right-click the IE desktop icon and select "Start Without
Add-ons."

Many have experience problems with TeaTimer, and your figures are
*very* high for it! You might want to disable it. (I would.)

Many people have correctly reported that *currently* you do not have
enough RAM for how you are using your PC. But the solution is not more
RAM. The solution is to address which of the above things I referenced
is contributing to your memory problems and specifically solve *those*
issues. Once you bring your Total and Peak figures down to their
proper levels, you will see you have plenty of RAM.

Also, you might want to do the following so that Windows manages your
Virtual Memory efficiently:

Here are the instructions you need, taken from
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837869 :

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.

3. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

4. On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.

5. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the
paging file that you want to change.

6. Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to select the
System managed size check box, and then click Set.

7. Click OK three times.

 

[Gerry]

Bill

How much free disk space you have on your C drive?


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[BillW50]

In Gerry typed on Tue, 19 May 2009 15:58:33 +0100:

Bill

How much free disk space you have on your C drive?


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Right now 6.66GB free on that machine including a hiberfil.sys of a
2,087,412 KB file.

 

[Gerry]

Bill

How large is the C drive? Have you checked the amount of free disk when
it sucessfully hibernates and when hibernation fails?


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[HeyBub]

It could mean that you're running more programs simultaneously than
you used to, or that you using larger input files with the programs
you're running, or just that the OS is having trouble finding enough
disk space for the swap file.

Check your free disk space. Maybe just defragging would help, or
maybe you need to free up some space. Also, I'd set the swap file to
"let Windows manage". And 512MB is minimal for XP, just increasing
that would reduce the need for swap space.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(Shell/User)
(e-mail address removed)
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

Hi Tim,
Thank you for your thoughts. My habits really haven't changed much - I
usually have IE7, outlook express, quickbooks and excel open. Also
word, sometimes. I find that if i run IE7 without all the pictures
and cute stuff, that helps for a little while.

My 40-gig hard drive has about 19.8 gigs free today. Shouldn't that be
enough? I defrag daily, like i said, but it doesn't seem that the
free space increases after cleaning up and deleting stuff.

I think Windows does manage the memory - maybe I wasn't clear about
the error messages I'm seeing: 'Your virtual memory is too low -
windows is increasing [something]...' I'm not sure about the exact
wording, but I think that is how it got to 923 today.

I could add more memory, if I could find a reputable computer repair
in the area. I'm kind of skeptical of little independent outfits. My
computer knowledge has always been on a 'need-to-know' basis - when I
need to know, I figure it out. I know very little about hardware.

So, then, we have a "teaching moment." Virtual memory is not memory, hence
the "virtual" part (it could just as easily been called "fake" or
"evanascent" or "gossamer" memory). When Windows needs more (real) memory to
do something, such as open a spreadsheet, and there's not enough (real)
memory to do so, it rolls out some of the contents of (real) memory to disk
(hence the "virtual" memory). If there's not enough room in the file
allocated for this temporary holding area, Windows pauses and allocates more
disk space to hold the new stuff - that it, Windows increases (the file size
of) virtual memory.

You can actually MAKE this happen by opening sufficiently many spreadsheets
or Word documents or anything else. "Sufficiently many" may mean in the
hundreds, but you can eventually do it.

 

[Gerry]

Take a photographic image and keep editing without saving!


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I recently started getting virtual memory errors (too low) - daily
- on my ~5-year old computer. I have 512 mb ram and generally have
4 or 5 applications open at once. the virtual memory is set to 768,
but right now has increased (all by itself) to 923.

What does this mean? I went for years without this happening. Any
help would be appreciated.

It could mean that you're running more programs simultaneously than
you used to, or that you using larger input files with the programs
you're running, or just that the OS is having trouble finding enough
disk space for the swap file.

Check your free disk space. Maybe just defragging would help, or
maybe you need to free up some space. Also, I'd set the swap file to
"let Windows manage". And 512MB is minimal for XP, just increasing
that would reduce the need for swap space.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(Shell/User)
(e-mail address removed)
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

Hi Tim,
Thank you for your thoughts. My habits really haven't changed much -
I usually have IE7, outlook express, quickbooks and excel open. Also
word, sometimes. I find that if i run IE7 without all the pictures
and cute stuff, that helps for a little while.

My 40-gig hard drive has about 19.8 gigs free today. Shouldn't that
be enough? I defrag daily, like i said, but it doesn't seem that the
free space increases after cleaning up and deleting stuff.

I think Windows does manage the memory - maybe I wasn't clear about
the error messages I'm seeing: 'Your virtual memory is too low -
windows is increasing [something]...' I'm not sure about the exact
wording, but I think that is how it got to 923 today.

I could add more memory, if I could find a reputable computer repair
in the area. I'm kind of skeptical of little independent outfits. My
computer knowledge has always been on a 'need-to-know' basis - when I
need to know, I figure it out. I know very little about hardware.

So, then, we have a "teaching moment." Virtual memory is not memory,
hence the "virtual" part (it could just as easily been called "fake"
or "evanascent" or "gossamer" memory). When Windows needs more (real)
memory to do something, such as open a spreadsheet, and there's not
enough (real) memory to do so, it rolls out some of the contents of
(real) memory to disk (hence the "virtual" memory). If there's not
enough room in the file allocated for this temporary holding area,
Windows pauses and allocates more disk space to hold the new stuff -
that it, Windows increases (the file size of) virtual memory.

You can actually MAKE this happen by opening sufficiently many
spreadsheets or Word documents or anything else. "Sufficiently many"
may mean in the hundreds, but you can eventually do it.

 

[HeyBub]

Take a photographic image and keep editing without saving!

Yeah. I guess you could have a webcam looking over your shoulder and
streaming the output to a disk file...

There's more than one way to rope a cat.

 

[BillW50]

In Gerry typed on Tue, 19 May 2009 16:49:49 +0100:

Bill

How large is the C drive? Have you checked the amount of free disk
when it sucessfully hibernates and when hibernation fails?


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes I have Gerry. If I run 1GB or 512MB of memory, hibernation is
flawless. If I run 1.5GB or 2GB, it may or may not work. Once it fails,
it always will until a reboot. And the error messsage says that it
doesn't have enough resources to complete.

 

[Gerry]

Bill

How large is the hard drive? How is the drive partitioned?

The standard hard drive for your model seems to be 60 gb but it seems
you can have up to 100 gb.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[BillW50]

In Gerry typed on Mon, 1 Jun 2009 09:36:27 +0100:

Bill

How large is the hard drive? How is the drive partitioned?

The standard hard drive for your model seems to be 60 gb but it seems
you can have up to 100 gb.

Hi Gerry! Yes originally they (I have two of these remember) came with
60GB hard drives with two partitions. One was a recovery partition using
about 6GB. Later I upgraded one of them with a 120GB HDD with a single
partition.

 

[Gerry]

Bill

Some computer suppliers allocate an over large portion of the drive to
the recovery partition. If both recovery partitions are only 6 gb then
that is not a problem.

You may be able to free up more space on the C drive on both computers.

The default allocation to System Restore is 12% on your C partition
which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb. Right click your My
Computer icon on the Desktop and select System Restore. Place the cursor
on your C drive select Settings but this time find the slider and drag
it to the left until it reads 700 mb and exit. When you get to the
Settings screen click on Apply and OK and exit.

A default setting which could be wasteful is that for temporary internet
files, especially if you do not store offline copies on disk. The
default allocation is 3% of drive. Depending on your attitude to offline
copies you could reduce this to 1% or 2%. In Internet Explorer select
Tools, Internet Options, General, Temporary Internet Files, Settings to
make the change. At the same time look at the number of days history is
held.

The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive. Change to
5%, which should be sufficient. In Windows Explorer place the cursor
on your Recycle Bin, right click and select Properties, Global and
move the slider from 10% to 5%. However, try to avoid letting it get
too full as if it is full and you delete a file by mistake it will
bypass the Recycle Bin and be gone for ever.

After making changes. Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System
Tools, Disk CleanUp to Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary
Internet Files. Also select Start, All Programs, accessories, System
Tools, Disk CleanUp, More Options, System Restore and remove all but the
latest System Restore point. Run Disk Defragmenter.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ruthie]

Hi Gerry,

A very belated 'thank you!' to you for taking the time to answer, and an
update:

I recently updated Norton Internet Security 200_8_ to NIS 2009. This 1)
freed up almost a gigabyte of hard drive space, eliminated about 50,000 files
on my computer, and amazingly, made it run just fine again, like it did
months ago.

I infer (remember, my computer knowledge is on a 'need-to-know' basis) that
there is a conflict between Internet Explorer 8 and NIS 2008.

This virtual memory isssue began very shortly after my browser was updated
from IE 7 to IE 8, by Windows update. I find it fascinating that I had to
figure this out myself. I would have thought that Norton or Microsoft would
know this sort of thing...

Anyway, I though you all would like to know about this - the issue appears
to be resolved now, and my computer runs as well as it did months ago, with
no more virtual memory errors.

Ruthie

 

[Gerry]

Ruthie

Glad your problem is resolved.

The lessons arising from the introduction of IE8 are still being
learned.

Thanks for letting me know the outcome.

--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~