keep failing to solve 'insufficient resources' problem in windows 7

This problem is getting pretty old, and I've gone through a lot of searches and potential solutions already. Please read 'solutions tried' before answering...

Details about my systems.

1) The older computer: Samsung HDD, 6GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, running on Asus P5K mainboard. Four times as much software installed as on the new one,. Easily reaches one or two months of uptime without rebooting windows. Never runs out of resources.

2) The new computer: OCZ Vertex 4, i7-3770 CPU, GTX 670, 8GB CL8 RAM, Asus P8Z77i-Deluxe (not overclocked). This system has only a small subset of the software installed that resides on the old system.

Windows 7 Professional 64bit SP1 with updates and drivers current on both machines.

The Problem: After running the new machine for 30 minutes to an hour, it will fail even small tasks like copying a file with an "Error 1450: insufficient resources exist to complete..."

Causes pretty much ruled out so far:
- Installed Software other than drivers, since none of my software produces any such problem on my old machine
- Registry size - this Registry is half the size of the one on the old computer
- Virus - Kaspersky has a pretty good reputation and should find pretty much everything when run from outside windows. Windows Security Essentials, Windows Defender and Sphinx Software firewall are always active.
- Available hard drive space - 256GB windows drive is less than half full.
- RAM, Swapfile and CPU utilization: all 3 show well below 50% usage at any given time.
- Temperatures - the system runs perfectly cool, using Asus Fan Control, everything stays around 85-95F.

Solutions tried:
- 3 different Microsoft KB's regarding max handles (set to max)
- 1 Microsoft KB regarding max registry size (set to max)
- Tracking Handles with ProcessExplorer.exe
- Trackign Handles with handles.exe
- scouring system logs for errors (found nothing that gave me any clue)
- Uninstalling or disabling autorun for all non-essential software.
- Uninstalling nonessential mainboard drivers, Asus Utilities etc
- Tried different Nvidia drivers
- used Registry cleaner
- used System File Checker (SFC /scannow)
- ran Windows Security Essentials full system scan
- used Kaspersky Antivirus from its own boot disk with newest definitions
- Sysinternals Rootkit Revealer (I'm not really pro at evaluating the results on that)
- CC Cleaner
- Malwarebytes
- tested RAM with memtest
- manually underclocked RAM
- asked all my programmer friends...

They just told me the same Microsoft KB's that I had already found when googling my error.

Possibly interesting fact:
Using ProcessExplorer.exe or Handles.exe, once the problem becomes acute, will both fail with the message "Insufficient system resources to get handle information."

So, the very trouble shooting tools I try to use quit working.

I just tested it again: Since cold boot on this sytem, I have run nothing except internet explorer, opened this forum and have been typing this for ~15 minutes. I have 6 tabs open from my search. That's all! Still, as soon as I start up Process Explorer, it pops the error message. If I start it as the first thing, it will track handles ok until the system runs out of resources. But I don't really know what I'm looking for, I don't see any one process have way more handles than any of the other processes. Nothing looks conspicuously out of order.

If I ignore the fact that some programs start refusing to run (can't load DirectX after it runs out of resources, can't copy etc) and keep running the browser, maybe use word and excel (which oddly always start fine), it'll continue chugging along for some time still. It does not BSOD, it'll just hard freeze, so I have to hit reset.

Any of my 'bigger' Software including games will run fine, as long as I start it right after a reboot - even for hours on end. But once I close and try to start it again, no cigar, until reboot.

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Could this be a hardware problem of some sort? Or could one of Asus' or Intel's drivers be bad and leak resources like no tomorrow? Is there a better way for me to trouble shoot?

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Any advice would be much appreciated, hope this is the right section of the forum...

The most likely cause is a bad install of Windows. I ran into that back when adding a WD Green Power model 500gb drive in for the extra drive for RC testing on 7. Nothing would run right on that install where I finally decided to leave that one in for storage only until building the present case.

Any and all Windows installs whether XP,, Vista, or 7 beta to RC back then would run normally on the WD Caviar SE 500gb drives while that one particular drive removed from an external enclosure was problematic from the start. Since you are running an SSD the board's bios setting as far as the drive mode could also be other thing to be looking at. AHCI or ide?

Thanks for the info... Your question reminds me of a couple of things that might be relevant to the issue:

The BIOS is set to AHCI, the SSD is hooked up to the first SATA-3 port on the mainboard. The drive has been NTFS formatted with a single partition prior to installing windows.

The UEFI BIOS is set to legacy mode, due to the fact that I had to manually select the drive to boot in UEFI mode every time, while it boots without intervention in legacy mode.

The computer has also been unable to hibernate or enter sleep mode from the day of installation.


Just remembered that I also have an unknown device in device manager, listed with hardware ID ACPI\INT\33A0. Windows can't find a driver for it and neither can Google, it seems. Some posts seem to think its a virtual Intel driver of some sort...

You may be right about the need for an Intel driver. That seems to surround an Intel Z77 chipset if the search on that is correct. The search results ended up on a vendor's product/information page for an Asrock board which could be part of the problem while it is usually the drive mode or need for Sata/Raid type controller drivers that can stall the works.

When first getting into this build the board came set default for AHCI and Windows ran like crap at first until switching modes to the Native ide option and suddenly all ran well. Recently during the summer when looking into the AHCI guide here and switching the modes all drivers were already on and all went smooth as silk with both OS drive mounted as SCSI devices.

It sounds like the soluttion for you may be similar in fashion where you run things in one mode until everything is on and then switch over to see a normal running OS. That would be switching to ide and watching to see if performance suddenly presents itself and then going to the Intel support site to look things up there as well as at Asus.

You screwed your system with those registry cleaners, get a fresh install to sort those problems, if possible run a couple of memtest loops to discard memory errors, and load bios defaults.

Upon looking up the error message you are seeing I ran across one thread you may be interested in loooking over at the MS TechNet site. This is regards to the same error seen when someone was trying to install the Enterprise edition where the advice was to set a registry value to unlimited. Windows Modules Installer - Error 1450 Insufficient System Resources

The error message itself can also be seen with several other versions like XP or Exchange Server 2007 as another example and not pointing directly at anything wrong with the new build so far. "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service" error message when you try to extend database files in an Exchange Server 2007 environment