Terrible kernel leak, recent -last month- no service clearly a sou

G

Guest

I'm getting non-paged memory ramped up to failure twice daily; this had
started to occur several weeks ago but is now very pronounced. Spyware free,
virus free, firewalls etc all updated and working. I used the procedure to
monitor Perfmon non-paged use as I turned off services, yet none of their
terminations dropped the allocation. For those such as firewall that had to
be reset to disabled at next start, I rebooted, but they too weren't the
apparent source... still leaking like a sieve.
I'd had Windows Update automatically running, since stopped that, as that
was the only source of new software on the system.
Are there any recent findings or fix steps? 872942 refers to an Explorer
leak that we must request from MS. Is this a solid fix, does that issue kill
an XP Pro system in half a day?
thanks in advance
 
R

Ron Martell

bernB said:
I'm getting non-paged memory ramped up to failure twice daily; this had
started to occur several weeks ago but is now very pronounced. Spyware free,
virus free, firewalls etc all updated and working. I used the procedure to
monitor Perfmon non-paged use as I turned off services, yet none of their
terminations dropped the allocation. For those such as firewall that had to
be reset to disabled at next start, I rebooted, but they too weren't the
apparent source... still leaking like a sieve.
I'd had Windows Update automatically running, since stopped that, as that
was the only source of new software on the system.
Are there any recent findings or fix steps? 872942 refers to an Explorer
leak that we must request from MS. Is this a solid fix, does that issue kill
an XP Pro system in half a day?
thanks in advance
Click to expand...

When your non-paged memory has increased substantially, but well
before it reaches the critical level, open Windows Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Delete)
Go to the Processes tab.
Use View - Select Columns to ensure that the Non-paged pool is being
displayed.
Click twice on the NP Pool column header to sort the list into
descending order based on the values in that column.
Post the names of the 4 or 5 highest usage items, and their usage
amounts, back here.

On my own system, with 512 mb of RAM and 8 active applications on the
task bar plus antivirus and antispyware running, it currently shows
the Nonpaged total as 5908K with the highest single item being a
Lexmark printer item at 33K.

Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
G

Guest

As fate would have it the system ran out of paging memory just as I had
attempted the repost. Luck I copied into a draft email. At the restart,
Outlook started with ~11,000k and 4k NP, 3minutes ago, is now up to 28,200k
memory 13k NP.
this continues even after outlook is 'closed' though.
here are the numbers just before I crashed:
outlook.exe 64.5k mem 27k NP 14thr
svchost.exe 19.8k mem 13k NP 41 thr
svchost.exe 4.3k mem 12k NP 9thr
iexplore.exe 11.1k mem 11k NP 17thr
explorer.exe 27.3k mem 11k NP 14thr
 
R

Ron Martell

bernie said:
I've 1GB
29200k NP and rising- only Outlook, IE6, antivirus and firewall.
not good.
Click to expand...

If I have your abbreviations sorted out correctly you said in your
first response that Outlook had a value of 28,200K in the NP Pool
column in Task Manager, but then later in that same post you say that
Outlook.exe is at 27K. This is confusing.

If Outlook is using that high a value for NP Pool then it is obviously
the #1 suspect. What is the exact version number of your installed
Outlook? Launch Outlook and look in Help - About Microsoft Office
Outlook. The Outlook 2003 installed on this computer reports that it
is Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (11.8002.6568) SP2 and when it is
running the NP Pool value is 19K.

The information about your Outlook version may help to identify the
underlying cause of your problem. It may be as simple as downloading
and installing a service pack for Microsoft Office or some selected
office updates.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
G

Guest

Thanks Ron, I do appreciate your help.
I have the most recent XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro fixes- I'd been getting
them regularly.
I have in some roll of Fate (OK, I spent $ on a replacement system- doesn't
that always fix the offending system for surreal reasons?) gotten the 2k/sec
NP rampup resolved. Don't know what had "fixed" it but these were steps I
took:
1) uninstalled .NET 1.1 and 2.0, had no products active on these.
2) defragmented disk (was at 25% free but fragmented)
3) ran DiskCleanup- a HUGE MISTAKE. It compresses ANY file over 50days old
if you select it. This caused NTFS compression across extensive percentage
of executables; normally this will be ok as apps go to NTFS to ask for their
files- but NOT MS APPS! NOO they're too "smart" and try to access through
the back door/ registry volume entries etc. Once files were compressed every
MS App, every Office 2003 app failed to start at all and looped on trying to
call home the error.
4) Uncompressed (compact /u) and selectively recompressed (compact /c or via
windows GUI) the normal sets of directories. This completely corrected the
Office apps issues.
This Left hand of MS not working well with the right hand of MS is a very
tiring, very old and frustrating problem.
5) Moved several "My Documents" folders to other physical drives to clear
more space to get 50% (6GB) free space.
{ Again, if MS apps would behave (and ZoneAlarm as well :| ) they could
allow us to "link" to separate drives for the large folders such as docs-
which includes the video, music and picture folders as well as docs, all huge
disk-hounds. This works great until ZoneAlarm or Access writes INTO the
"pseudo folder/link" rather than using NTFS to follow the path to the true
file. Grrrrr. I digress }
I sure hope they fix this on Vista/Longhorn.
6) refrag'd again.
Without the .Net, with adequate disk space, and with a huge amount of time
and experience most users will not have, I got past this.
However, as I did buy a new system- I still think this was the true
solution! - I'll be moving critical work to that updated technology and use
this as my firewall system.
Again Ron, I do appreciate your help- it is very nice to know professionals
that care enough to help others.
 
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