Am I or am I not having a memory problem?

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No. XP limits applications to 2GB ram or 50%

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 1, 2007 6:26AM PDT

This is documented in the articles at http://support.microsoft.com

You can switch this to 3GB with the /3GB switch in BOOT.INI. Look up that?

Bob

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set /3GB switch

by Scooter3000 Aug 1, 2007 7:03AM PDT

I put the /3GB switch in my boot.ini but I am not seeing any difference in the reported amount of RAM in neither system properties nor task manager. Should I see a difference there?

I'll need to wait and see if there is a change in behavior.

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There will be no reported difference.

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 1, 2007 9:11AM PDT

I noted that XP limits application memory use to 2GB without this. It will never change the reported memory. Please read the articles about this feature.

Bob

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32 Bit

by Me, Myself and You Aug 1, 2007 10:27AM PDT

32 Bit Windows OSes only support and utilise up to and including 3GBs or sometimes 3.5GBs or RAM.

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XP 32 limits applications to 3.0 GB

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 1, 2007 11:31AM PDT

Even with 3.5GB being reported, XP 32 bit still enforces the application limit to 3.0GB.

A few seem to bemoan this limit.

Bob

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well

by Me, Myself and You Aug 1, 2007 6:45PM PDT

Well, I was almost right.

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/3GB switch didn't help

by Scooter3000 Aug 3, 2007 1:11AM PDT

I've been running with the /3GB switch in my boot.ini for two days and have seen the same behavior. I've had to re-boot twice due to flaky behavior (as originally described). The threshold commit charge didn't even change. about 1.5GB commit charge => flaky behavior.

Are there any other suggestions short of re-installing Windows XP (which I'm about to resort to doing)?

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Not for me to say, but

by MarkFlax Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 1:17AM PDT

if re-booting appears to resolve this behavior, why not re-boot once a day? You mentioned the computer is on for 1.5 to 2 days at a time. Unless there is a need for it to be running 24/7, a re-boot doesn't take that much time.

And it avoids re-installing Windows.

Mark

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Can you tell ...

by Kees Bakker Aug 3, 2007 1:21AM PDT

the exact error message, not just something vaguely describing it.

Kees

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error messages

by Scooter3000 Aug 3, 2007 1:48AM PDT

For most of the issues, I don't get an error message.

I will try to start an application and it looks like it is starting and then it just shuts down.

I start an application and it appears to start but the GUI is blinking and flashing all of the controls and data within it

I will try to browse to a website in IE7 and the browser just goes blank and stays blank

There is one application I have (Toad) that will throw an error message. I'll capture it the next time it happens but the gust is "not enough resources to perform that action"

I also had been peridocially getting a message from my virus scanner (McAfee VirusScan) saying "outlook.exe::GetProcAddress" (always outlook, sometimes different procedure), "detected as: bo:heap", "state: blocked by buffer overflow protection". I don't know if this is related to my memory problems.

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Scooter3000

by tomron Aug 3, 2007 2:00AM PDT

Regarding "outlook.exe::GetProcAddress"

Try this LINK

Seems to be an update issue with McAfee.Maybe update or disable McAfee as a test to see if issue remains.

Tom

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What apps are running?

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 1:38AM PDT

I ran into some user that was running P2P apps and we traced the memory issue to those. Removing those apps fixed it.

Bob

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none installed

by Scooter3000 Aug 3, 2007 1:52AM PDT

As far as I know, I have no P2P apps installed on my machine.

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Then email me...

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 2:11AM PDT

Your output from these two tools.

Command prompt and the TASKLIST command.

The log for HIJACKTHIS.

This is not a known XP issue. It can be a firewall or other app issue. Norton is notorious in this area as well as some other Antivirus Suites.

Bob

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Let's try just ONE item from your HJT log.

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 4:54AM PDT

http://www.tech-recipes.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2328 seems to follow my sentiment on this 'feature.' There are plenty of other posts that note it grows and grows in memory use.

Can you do without searchindexer.exe?

I see you have a lot going on in this machine. It could be something else such as Mcafee or that oracle client but unless we kill them one or two at a time and retest we're really not sure. I'm going to take a shot from the hip at this item.

Bob

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Oh man. Look at Outlook.exe

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 4:56AM PDT

What is Outlook doing with 1/4 GB RAM? Mine is running and is at 22MB.

Something's not right with that one.

Bob

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Outlook

by Scooter3000 Aug 3, 2007 5:05AM PDT

I wondered why it hogged so much myself.

I do run Franklin Covey PlanPlus which is an add on that provides a nice way to view your email, tasks and calendar all in one view. I did un-install it (not just turn it off) and run for a few days to see if that would help but I had the same behavior but I saw that Outlook used less memory - not a tremendous amount though.

I do keep a few pst files open with emails in them so that they will be indexed by windows desktop search. I did try not having them open for a few days to see if that would help but I had the same behavior.

Could that account for the massive amount of memory used by Outlook?

BTW - I did uninstall and re-install Outlook (and the rest of Office 2003) to see if that would help - nope.

If it would be helpful to uninstall PlanPlus and close the psts and gather some numbers while putting them back into play, I wouldn't mind doing that.

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My prime suspect is mcafee.

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 5:30AM PDT

It's addins have been known to "leak."

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Bob

by tomron Aug 3, 2007 5:34AM PDT

Check this LINK

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Tomron

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Aug 3, 2007 6:57AM PDT

From the logs I received I can't tell versions... At least with Enterprise they get prime support.

Bob

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I agree with the way the discussion goes now.

by Kees Bakker Aug 3, 2007 6:41AM PDT

It's not a memory problem, it's some program or service gradually degrading some (unknown) resources until it's too late. Not a XP issue, not a hardware issue. Just some program missing things up.

Find it by elimination. Start with running only XP and half of all programs ('all programs' include firewall and antivirus, so disconnect from the net). Wait 2 days and you'll now if it's in this half of the programs or the other half. In 10 days you know the culprit from 32 candidates. In 14 days from 128 candidates. Should work, but it takes some time.

Marks advice (if the situation takes 2 days to become critical, then shut down the machine each night and reboot each morning) might save you a lot of harassment and certainly a lot of electricity (and so money). But you might prefer to find the cause, of course. That's OK with me.

Kees

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some numbers

by Scooter3000 Aug 3, 2007 7:07AM PDT

for anyone interested in the numbers:

I disabled the "exchange scan" Outlook add-in and memory usage for Outlook went down by 55MB

Disabling PlanPlus also had a significant impact - 60+ MB so I'm going to see about a replacement that isn't such a hog.

Having several pst files open vs. not open in Outlook didn't make much of a dent.

If I disabled PlanPlus, exchange scan, and didn't have any psts open, my Outlook memory usage at startup was 28120K

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Scooter3000

by tomron Aug 3, 2007 7:17AM PDT

You can check task manager to see what is utilizing the most memory.

In task manager>processes Tab>then click on mem usage to the highest number.

Tom

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Just some thoughts (again).

by Kees Bakker Aug 3, 2007 8:18PM PDT

My assumptions are:
1. A resource eating program.
2. Total address space (= real + virtual memory) = 3Gb. I'm not sure you can add the real and virtual memory, but your suggestion in your other post could very well be right. Anyway, there is a limit, and you seem to run into it.

Please tell the whole story: all three numbers shown in http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/commit_charge.html when the system starts to misbehave. And tell the virtual memory settings.

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commit_charge stating explicitely that more memory is used than being shown (for open files). That might be important also.

Possible scenario's:
1. You find the resource eating program and stop using it. The system should work perfectly.
2. A daily reboot before the situation gets out of control.
3. Buy a 64 bit CPU and a 64-bit version of XP or Vista and a large hard disk. This will allow the resource eating program to eat memory up to, say, 400 Gb. That might allow for a yearly reboot only, and that might be acceptable to you.

It would be interesting to see if you note any performance difference between using 3 Gb RAM and no virtual memory or 1 Gb RAM and 2 or 3 Gb virtual memory. That's the usual setup for Windows XP home, and I think it would suffice for you also. That would be an nice experiment.

Kees

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