VISTA memory problems (lots of them)

[Guest]

For some reason I really thought that VISTA was supposed to be an upgrade
from Windows XP. Why are there so many memory related problems associated
with VISTA. I have a DELL 2 GB dual core XEON system that constantly forces
applications (MS and others) to crash when more than a few windows are open
concurrently. The problems manifest themselves even more severly when Adobe
Photoshop is being used. Problems first appear as drop down menus not
opening, links not working, and just in general most functionalities freezing
on applications. When you leave a system on for long, often you have to
re-boot the system to get anything to open. If somehing happens to open, it
quickly disappears again. This is just a subset of problems I've expereinced
with the NEW Ulitimate Windows Vista with all the latest fixes. Does
microsoft have a QA group or is it missing in action? Also, I would think
that I'm not the only one reporting this, and if so, where is the Microsoft
support?

 

[Thai Berry \(U.S.\)]

what version of photoshop?

Only CS3 is officially compatible with vista

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

what version of photoshop?

Only CS3 is officially compatible with vista

I was using CS2 with no issues, for months.

ss.

 

[John Barnes]

Sounds like your machine is just not up to the job. One thing that Vista is
poor about is allocating processes between cores, so you might want to look
in task manager when you are experiencing problems and see what is causing
your problems. You can manual set affinity as I have to, to balance out the
load. Turning off aero, the DreamScene desktop etc could get you moving.

 

[Jume]

the symptoms seems to say that you have a program constantly consuming and
exhausting desktop resources (and obviously not freeing them) more than a
memory problem

can you try stopping/disabling every non-vital program for your daily work?
this would include almost anything, such as systray programs, automatic
updaters, downloaders... and of course antivirus, which often causes these
kind of problems btw

and then, if all goes well it would mean that some of them is the culprit,
and the only thing left to do is enabling them day-by-day, one-by-one, until
you find it

its just a theory, but may be worth to try... another one would be a faulty
memory chip, but i think you would have blue screens more than anything else

 

[Guest]

John,
Why would my machine which is very new and definitely more than VISTA
ready not be up to par? I have a dual core XEON WOODCREST, 5130 processor
and 2 GB of storage and at least 60 GB of disk space available. I am going
to go up to 16 GB of storage, a second dual core processor and over 2 TB of
disk space and 64bit vista, hoping that I don't see these problems any
longer, but my confidence is very low that this will solve the problem.

 

[Guest]

I'm using CS3.

what version of photoshop?

Only CS3 is officially compatible with vista

 

[Guest]

Hi Jume,
I have no doubt that something is doing that. But it seems to manifest
itself even with I have a few IE7 windows open with multiple tabs in each.
Now this may sound like I'm doing something unusual, but doing this in XP
never caused me any problems.

 

[Richard Urban]

Task manager would certainly help in locating this problem. Are you saying
that you don't have one single program on this computer that is not on your
XP box. Unlikely! Find out which program is eating your resources. Task
manager is fit to the task - unless you have been rooted and the program
doing this bad stuff is hidden.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

Hi Richard,
I could tell you off hand immediately that IE is one of the biggest
memory eaters surprisingly. I know that Photoshop and lightroom take up a
lot of room depending on what your'e viewing in them, but I've had both of
them closed and had problems. I've looked at task manger when I have had the
problems and didn't notice anything very unusual. Seems like there is often
room and somehow the system stops responding.

 

[John Barnes]

Do you know the difference between a cpu and memory? Look in the processor
section of task manager and set it to see both cores. Then see if you are
maxing out on one of them when you have problems. If you have a machine
that is up to speed, which does take more resources than XP, then you should
have no problems.
IE doesn't take up that much memory. I always have at least 6 iterations
with 2-10 tabs each, open all the time and have no problems. Does depend
somewhat is being displayed. Maybe your processor is slow. Remember your
program will only run on one core at a time.

 

[Richard Urban]

Well, either the CPU is maxed out *OR* the RAM is maxed out. Task manager
will show each of these conditions. Look under the process tab - then "show
processes for all users". It *will* tell you what is using the resources.

You have the computer, we don't. Don't guess - use Task Manager and know!

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

Now that wasn't nice? Do I know the difference between cpu and memory? You
think after 25 years of high end software developement and consulting I might
know that? Anyway, As I said I have 2 GB of RAM (that is memory as you know)
and it doesn't seem to be very utilized. I'll try and figure something out
because obvious answers don't help in this case. Of course the first thing
I'd check is the memory utilization in the task manager. I was looking to
see if others were having this problem; since no one else is, I'll work on
this one systematically until I zero in, but thanks for the effort anyway.

-Romel

 

[John Barnes]

As I said in a previous post, check to see if one of the cores is maxing
out. Vista is not very efficient at allocating between cores and I have to
set the affinity manually the way I use the computer. I will often have
things freezing because 1 core is maxed out and the other is running 20-30
%. After I set the affinity for about 7 of my processes everything runs
perfectly smoothly. Hope that is your problem. Easy to solve, but
extremely annoying to have to manually do that each time I boot up.

 

[Guest]

Well, thanks John I appreciate your thoughts and I will look into setting the
affinity manually. I've never done that, but I guess I'll figure it out. My
whole concern was why would someone have to do that to cover for MS screw
ups? I mean why would someone who pays all that money for an OS have to do
something like that. I mean do you agree that this should be something that
MS should acknowlege and fix? Like very very quickly?

-Romel

 

[Richard Urban]

Are all of the programs you are running designed with dual core in mind? I
doubt it. There are only a few programs that will utilize dual core
correctly, in addition to the operating system. Do you want Microsoft to
write programs for other people? They must develop the programs themselves.
Until they do, you will see all sorts of anomalies re: dual core
utilization.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

Photoshop uses dual core, but that's not the point. My question is: As
advertised, is the OS supporting dual core? Yes or No? Another thing is that
good CPU / memory utilization should be inherent in any OS. Even all the
free OS's, and 2003 servers do that well. MY concern is that since the
highly acclaimed and expensive VISTA has come on, there have been memory
problems. I just checked the task manager and found that only 1.1 GB was
being utilized out of 2GB and sitll i had to reload IE becasue links and
menus didn't work until I reloaded it. When I look at System and application
logs, the system log indicates heap allocation problems and application log
has this for IE:

Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 7.0.6000.16512, time stamp
0x46807103, faulting module yiesrvc.dll_unloaded, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp
0x4547b219, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x623068e0, process id
0x1758, application start time 0x01c807cca7637f3f

So I'm starting to suspect IE7 as a culprit in all of this, especially since
I see it with 170MB of allocated memory for one process alone which doesn't
have many open tabs.

 

[John Barnes]

I agree with you. It isn't that a program is written to use both cores.
Very few are and for the most part, that isn't efficient and is a waste of
resources.
Vista SHOULD allocate executing processes to the cores in a manner that
balances them out. It does not on my machine, requiring manual setting of
affinity.
Windows XP64 which I also run with the same processes (to the extent
possible) does allocate the processes properly and I do NOT have to manually
balance them. That system is written based on their Server 2003 code base,
and that may be the reason one works and since Vista is a consumer code base
that has been left out.

 

[Isabel]

I have exactly, word by word, the same problems with a very new DELL XPS M1710, T7600 @ 2.33GHz.

Extremely annoying considering the investment.

Can one revert back to XP at all?

Has anyone suggested an easy fix to this?


EggHeadCafe - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com

 

[Richard in AZ]

Isabel. It would be interesting to know what problem you were referring to!
If you want help, you have to provide details. (At least reference the post you read).

In general, if you bought a new computer with Vista, you may have to resolve your problems with
Vista.
Changing to Windows XP is going to cost you if even if you know how and do all the work yourself.