Memory Error :S

Elle7

My computer has started regularly producing a scary error message which tells me it needs to close programs to prevent information loss.

It doesn't tell me it's running low on memory, but over 50% of my main hard drive is free, 75% of the second, and I have 4gig of RAM.

The RAM is only six months or so old, and was working fine.

I have no idea what's wrong with it...any help please? It's driving me dotty!

Edit: If it helps, my paging file is set to 6899mb and is currently system managed. I have put this up to 7500mb but it didn't seem to make a difference so I've put it back to system managed and it's put it back to 6899mb.

RussJK

Any particular program this is reported for?

Windows 7? 64bit?

When it happens, check the Task Manager and make sure 'Show processes from all users' is selected, then look at the memory usage of each process. Could be a problem with a particular program (hopefully).

Also check the Performance tab and look at the commit charge, which takes into account RAM + pagefile. Make sure that it recognises all your RAM.

Elle7

RussJK wrote: »

Any particular program this is reported for?

Windows 7? 64bit?

When it happens, check the Task Manager and make sure 'Show processes from all users' is selected, then look at the memory usage of each process. Could be a problem with a particular program (hopefully).

Also check the Performance tab and look at the commit charge, which takes into account RAM + pagefile. Make sure that it recognises all your RAM.

Oops. Knew I'd forget something

I am using 64 bit Windows 7. The system does seem to register all my RAM. I've considered ordering more, do you think that would help?

It doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing. It can happen if I've just got Google Chrome open or if I'm on a game...I haven't found a correlation yet.

I have to admit the performance tab does baffle me, so I'll just copy it out, if that's okay?

Memory - total 4079, cached 2163, available 2123, free 26
Kernel Memory - paged 183 nonpaged 48
System - Handles 30915 threads 1032 processes 102 up time 00:10:23:54 Commit (GB) 4/10

CPU usage varies between 1 and 4%

Memory is pretty stable at 1.9GB. Physical memory usage is just a completely straight blue bar along the graph. The CPU graph is pretty smooth too...a few peaks but nothing huge.

Thank you!

RussJK

Go back to the processes tab, then make sure you've got it set to 'show processes from all users' so you can see everything that's running.

Then click on the memory column, to re-order it to easily see which running processes are using up the most memory. Write down anything about 100k.

What kind of games?

Any other users logged in?

Elle7

Chrome.exe *32 165,728 Chrome.exe *32 123,868 (Chrome.exe *32 also has 89.964, 54,336, 50,204, 35,324, 32,152, 27, 192, 25,516, 22,964,l 22,298, 20,488, 18,868, and so on....there is maybe 50 of them?)

WINWORD has 35,424.

Everything else is pretty small (below 20k) and I've definately got all processes showing

I play random games. It's quite a new PC...Sims 3 tends to run fine but sometimes jolts the error, torchlight, WoW occasionally...that type of thing

No other users, its only my PC so there is just one log in account.

Thanks again

RussJK

Do you have a lot of tabs open in Chrome? From what I understand, Chrome opens a new process for every tab.

Unless you have ~50 tabs open, there shouldn't be that many processes there. Try closing some tabs until you just have 1 open, and see how it corresponds to the memory usage and the number of Chrome.exe processes.

A commit charge of 4000mb is quite high for just browsing.

RussJK

Could you confirm that the error message is something like this:


and if so, what program it usually asks you to close.

Elle7

RussJK wrote: »

Could you confirm that the error message is something like this:


and if so, what program it usually asks you to close.

Sorry, got a throbbing headache last night so went for a lie down and didn't wake up

Yep, that's the error. It will want to close everything that is open...Chrome, Itunes, Word...literally everything. It doesn't let me click cancel, so I have to let it close everything and go back to desktop.

Edit: I did try closing my tabs last night (I usually have 7 or 8 open) and just using one, and then not using Chrome at all. The processes went down a bit but were still open, and the error still happened but it just started closing Word instead?

RussJK

Sounds like Chrome might be an issue. Shouldn't have loads of Chrome processes running if you've closed it, and the number of processes running should roughly match the number of tabs open.

Go back into Task Manager again and once again 'show all processes'. This time press View > Select Columns, and make sure 'Memory - Working Set", "Memory Peak Working Set", and "Memory - Commit Size" are ticked. Anything jump out at you with the peak working set?

Also please post a HijackThis log, the guide is here (http://www.users.on.net/~russ/hjt).

Restart the computer, then go back into task manager > performance, then write down the Commit (MB) figures. The commit figures will be roughly at their lowest - I'd want to compare this later on to what the figure is when it gets bogged down.

Use your computer as normal, and when you get problems again take a look in task manager and look at the process list and performance tab as you've been doing. Make sure as always to click 'show all processes'. Something it eating up memory more than it's meant to, so hopefully it'll become evident.

Other general advice for troubleshooting memory is reseating the memory, and running MEMtest (e.g. from UBCD http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/), but it sounds like it's a software issue.