"Out of system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again" error

[Bob Horton]

Hi.

I also posted this in the Outlook NG, but since I'm not really sure if this
is an Outlook,
Office, or XP problem, I thought I'd also post it here. My apologies in
advance if this is a problem for anyone.

I am running a system with XP Pro SP2, all updates installed. The ASUS A8V
system has 2 GB of PC3200 RAM, an Athlon 4000+ processor, 2 HDD's (the
system drive is a 300 GB Maxtor SATA with 16 MB cache, the storage drive is
a 200 GB Western Digital. I have an ATI 256 MB AGP video card. I have the
full version of Office 2003 installed, including Outlook 2003. Norton
System Works 2004. I run various spyware programs weekly. The system is
behind a NAT firewall. There appear to be no viruses or spyware present.

Very recently (after the last round of MS security updates), I started
receiving the message "Out of system resources. Close some windows or
programs and try again". I searched this group, the MS knowledgebase, and
others for a solution
and came up dry, though others had a similar but somewhat different error
message or different versions of Windows or Outlook they were dealing with.
This message seems to occur
only in Outlook, although it may have occurred once when trying to print a
document
in Word (another user, so I'm not sure that's true, but I use Word as the
email editor in Outlook). It has happened doing various tasks like trying
to save an email draft, trying to open emails, or even trying to move emails
from one folder to another. It happens in two different profiles, so I
don't think that's the issue. It happened this AM after a fresh reboot with
only Outlook 2003 open (no other programs or windows were open). I got the
message when trying to drag a file from the inbox to a personal storage
folder. I shut down Outlook, restarted it, and everything is fine for the
moment. I have reduced the number of start-up items with msconfig to those
that appear to be essential (mostly related to Norton System Works, ASUS
Probe, my mouse/keyboard software, and scanner utility). I have done the
same for processes. I have many other systems running with much less memory
and many more programs and services running with no problems.

I attempted to do a system restore but ran into the dreaded "unable to
restore" error (I have since repaired that issue through the "turn off, turn
on" system restore process. I am beginning to think I may have to wipe this
system and start over, but since it is our main graphics machine and has a
lot of software installed on it, I really would like a simpler solution if
someone has a suggestion.

TIA for any thoughts.

 

[Guest]

You seemed to have checked all the right things, although I would also diable
the mouse and keyboard software on startup as well as Asus probe and the
scanner utility. The XP mouse and keyboard drivers should be sufficient.
(They aren't Logitech are they? I had too amny problems with thier drivers)
Asus Probe and the scanner utility can both be started on their own (you
won't use functionality).
Have you checked your virtual memory settings?

 

[Bob Horton]

Thanks Jerry,

Since the post this AM I did more digging on system resources and XP. After
I got past all the articles saying that it was impossible to exhaust system
resources in XP (I already knew about the different system in XP versus 9x),
I found one that said that if you had the problem you should turn off the
automatic management of virtual memory and assign your own. Well, since I
had always set up my machines with a manual number that was about twice what
XP seemed to assign by itself I decided to go the other way and turn back
on the system managed function. Since then I haven't had a problem (not to
say that I won't). I usually leave on the ASUS probe utility since I know
I'll never remember to manually start it and would hate to fry a chip, and
the scanner utility only because this particular UMAX USB scanner is really
hard to "start" if it isn't started at boot-up The mouse/keyboard is MS
stuff which you need to toggle on the F-lock key (IMO senseless). If I have
any further problems I'll turn them off as well.

Thanks again!

 

[lkyoder]

Hi, Bob

I have just recently encountered the same problem. Interestingly, i
comes up when I'm not doing hardly anything--maybe OE and an I
window open

I'm used to having a half dozen IE windows an
Fireworks [b:7ce8a2caf6]and [/b:7ce8a2caf6]Photoshop
etc. all open at the same time and have never come across thi
before

I ran a virus scan this morning, and it found one trojan (java based)
which I of course deleted. I'm still getting the error from time t
time though

Any possibility this is a new breed of unidentified virus? It jus
seems weird to have suddenly come up like this, especially as you'r
seeing it out of the blue at the same time as well . .

Lesli