Memory not allocating correctly -> Crashing on Win 7 64bit.

[BenLind]

Hello guys!

I've found stuff on these forums to help me out via Google before so thanks for that! I can't really wrap my head around this one though...

I've had 4gigs of RAM installed for very long and I was able to work fine with my browser open + Photoshop and Blender in Win XP. I've quite recently upgraded from Win Xp 32bit to Win 7 64bit.

After installing Win 7 64bit I added 2x1GB sticks into my system to take advantage of memory I had available. These "new" sticks were of lower clocks than my 2x2GB I had installed so I tested clocking them higher. Well that wasn't really stable so I figured running them at lower clocks wouldn't hurt all that much.

So everything seemed to work fine, Memtest didn't whine about anything and everything seems to work well enough. Now however I can't have my browser + the other programs open at the same time but windows keeps whining about it running out of memory even though the taskbar memory amounts don't add up at all.

I have like 5Gigs used but adding everything doesn't even get up to 2Gigs. I know about windows keeping unused memory ready for use but it doesn't seem to be that or otherwise I don't know why my programs keep crashing all the time.

I have a load of tabs open in my browser but they don't take all that much memory. And I don't have any other programs open that would use that much for anything. This seems really odd to me.

Here's the resourcemonitor screenshot. Sorry it's in finnish but I guess it's clear enough anyway.

Another problem I forgot to add is that my display turns black sometimes and sometimes (not every time) after that I get the display driver error and that it's recovered. I've had this very seldomly before but now it seems quite common so I figured it might have something to do with that the display driver doesn't get enough memory to use either. Just a wild guess but textureloading in Blender doesn't work all the time etc. so it seems like a vRAM problem to me.

 

[marsmimar]

Hello BenLind and welcome to Seven Forums.

Try removing the 2 x 1GB sticks and go back to your original 4GB configuration. If you moved the 4GB sticks around make sure they're in their original slots. Test your computer and check Resource Monitor again. Right now, with the 2 X 1GB sticks installed your Available Memory is only 917MB and the Cached Memory is 242MB. That seems really, really low. You're also showing only 1MB Hardware Cached memory in the display. That usually runs from 10MB up to a few hundred MB depending on hardware installed.

 

[BenLind]

Thanks for the welcome!

Ok so I tried it out. Still only 1MB for the hardware. The browser seems to take more memory than visible as well but still it only takes about 3gigs now. Odd.

Opening Photoshop in addition to that and trying to open a 4K texture now gave an out of RAM message.

 

[centaur78]

Hi Ben

Just a quick thought,.... are you memory's installed in Dual channel mode... I mean ... most of the motherboard do have color coded memory slots .... so you would need to put the 2X2GB in the same colored slot or 2x1Gb in the remaining colored slots...

 

[OldMX]

dude, how many tabs are loaded on chrome??

 

[TBoyd]

dude, how many tabs are loaded on chrome??

Good question! Looks like a LOT.

BenLind - Please take some time to add some detailed specs of your PC in your profile, so we know what type of motherboard, CPU, etc that you have.

 

[BenLind]

Hi Ben

Just a quick thought,.... are you memory's installed in Dual channel mode... I mean ... most of the motherboard do have color coded memory slots .... so you would need to put the 2X2GB in the same colored slot or 2x1Gb in the remaining colored slots...

Yeah they are 2x2GB both in the right slots aka same color.

dude, how many tabs are loaded on chrome??

Quite a lot actually but that has never bothered me before even with a lot more tabs. I have a lot to read etc. so I like to have them open until I get them done. Slacking on the reading or whatever piles it up quickly.
They hardly consume a lot of memory anyway so that's not really an issue anyway.

dude, how many tabs are loaded on chrome??

Good question! Looks like a LOT.

BenLind - Please take some time to add some detailed specs of your PC in your profile, so we know what type of motherboard, CPU, etc that you have.

I added the specs to my profile now. Thanks for the tip!

Could the Bios setting "Allow Memory Remapping" or something similar be a reason for this weird behaviour or am I just talking crap here?

 

[centaur78]

Hi Ben

Based on the image you posted last... I do see quite a number of hard faults from Chrome, Mspaint, Cmdagent (Comodo firewall/antivirus ??). Even though they are not high enough to warrant a serious problem now... it would be wise if you could sort the Resmon by hard faults and post it here

Which bring me to the second question... you do have a SSD... how is the paging set here ??

Do you have another HDD that you could use to move the paging file from the SSD. As you do run a lot of memory intensive programs all at the same time .... like blender, photoshop etc.... its wise to work on your project files from HDD rather than the SSD.

Also even though you have told be the memories at the right position.... could you also check the actual memory from the BIOS when you install all the RAMS... i mean does it show 5 GB in BIOS.

 

[TBoyd]

You may have done this already, but check out section 2.4.2 "Memory Configurations" in the motherboard manual. If you don't have it, here's the link: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/Commando/e2938_commando.pdf
There seem to be a lot of stipulations concerning the memory configurations in that section.

Also, did you check to see if the new memory is included in the qualified vendor list for the mobo?

 

[BenLind]

Hi Ben

Based on the image you posted last... I do see quite a number of hard faults from Chrome, Mspaint, Cmdagent (Comodo firewall/antivirus ??). Even though they are not high enough to warrant a serious problem now... it would be wise if you could sort the Resmon by hard faults and post it here

Which bring me to the second question... you do have a SSD... how is the paging set here ??

Do you have another HDD that you could use to move the paging file from the SSD. As you do run a lot of memory intensive programs all at the same time .... like blender, photoshop etc.... its wise to work on your project files from HDD rather than the SSD.

Also even though you have told be the memories at the right position.... could you also check the actual memory from the BIOS when you install all the RAMS... i mean does it show 5 GB in BIOS.

Here's the resmon again.

The SSD only has 1GB pagefile since it's so small and I need the space. I've read that you don't need a pagefile really if you don't have craploads of stuff open and you run out of RAM. Don't know if that's true though.

Yes I have a HDD where all my project files are so I work that way already. I have software installed on the SSD to run and open faster but the projects are on the HDD.


And yes I have confirmed earlier that Bios recognizes the 6GB so it shouldn't be a problem with that.

You may have done this already, but check out section 2.4.2 "Memory Configurations" in the motherboard manual. If you don't have it, here's the link: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket775/Commando/e2938_commando.pdf
There seem to be a lot of stipulations concerning the memory configurations in that section.

Also, did you check to see if the new memory is included in the qualified vendor list for the mobo?

Yes it seems to be ok but the 2x2GB set is not from the same manufacturer as the 2x1GB set. I have 2x2GB dual channel memory from OCZ but the other memory is Nvidia SLI ready memory and isn't actually new. It was my old memory which was 2x1GB but I had sold it to a friend when I bought the 2x2GB set instead. Now when upgrading to 64bit I could use more than 4GB and my friend didn't need my old memory anymore so he gave it back.
Hope that made sense.

So now I have 6GB that is detected and works alright I suppose but my actual problem is still that memory is "bound" by something that isn't visible.

Could it be some malicious software or something? I'd think it would be visible though and I can't really see any point with it either since it doesn't really seem to do anything other than use memory but I'm just throwing it out there.

 

[centaur78]

Hi Ben

I would suggest you disable the paging on the SSD and set the paging on your HDD.

So as far as I understand you now have 6 GB that is detected properly and shown by Resmon as 6 GB......right ???

 

[BenLind]

Alright will do. Any reason for not having the page file on the SSD?

At the moment I have 4GB installed as marsmimar suggested I should take the 2x1GB set out to check if it helps. Well it didn't in any other way than that a bit less is used when idle and not doing anything. It almost seems like a percentage of the RAM is taken for something that isn't shown anywhere. Therefore with less RAM the amount used seems also to be smaller. Still a lot to just be used for nothing.

How much should I set for the pagefile on the HDD?

This is quite odd. Here all processes are visible and they don't nearly add up to the amount supposedly used. :/

 

[centaur78]

Alright will do. Any reason for not having the page file on the SSD?

The problem with an SSD is that data is written in blocks. A block may be 256KB: 256 * 1000 * 8 binary digits. To change even ONE of these digits, you must rewrite the ENTIRE block. That is to say, your OS sees 1 bit being written, but the SSD wear is equivalent to 256KB being written: a 2.048 MILLION fold difference.
Windows' page file is meant to keep space free in the memory by swapping out memory data to the disk, this to ensure that the memory doesn't get full when you run too many programs.

However, you might have a computer that only uses 2–3 GB of memory while you have 8 GB of memory. In such case, when you are sure your memory will almost never fill to 8 GB you can really spare out a lot of SSD writes by disabling the page file without any drawback.

When you do run out of memory (e.g., if you run virtual machines), you don't want your computer to thrash your SSD... So in essence this is to save to SSD on the long run

At the moment I have 4GB installed as marsmimar suggested I should take the 2x1GB set out to check if it helps. Well it didn't in any other way than that a bit less is used when idle and not doing anything. It almost seems like a percentage of the RAM is taken for something that isn't shown anywhere. Therefore with less RAM the amount used seems also to be smaller. Still a lot to just be used for nothing.

I'm bit confused by what you actually mean here ??

How much should I set for the pagefile on the HDD?

Once you disable the paging file on SSD, select you HDD and set it to "System Managed Size" which means means windows manages it and it would automatically set the amount to the physical memory you have..... ie,, if you have 4 GB, it would set it to 4-8GB and if you have 6GB then it would be 6-12GB.

If you are confident enough, you could also set it manually after looking at you usage at resmon

This is quite odd. Here all processes are visible and they don't nearly add up to the amount supposedly used. :/

Are you adding up the Commit or the Working set... Because the working set is what you need to add up... as it shows the amount of physical memory used by the processes. Commit is amount of virtual memory used by the processes..... from the image you posted... it looks ok to me..

 

[BenLind]

The problem with an SSD is that data is written in blocks. A block may be 256KB: 256 * 1000 * 8 binary digits. To change even ONE of these digits, you must rewrite the ENTIRE block. That is to say, your OS sees 1 bit being written, but the SSD wear is equivalent to 256KB being written: a 2.048 MILLION fold difference.
Windows' page file is meant to keep space free in the memory by swapping out memory data to the disk, this to ensure that the memory doesn't get full when you run too many programs.

However, you might have a computer that only uses 2–3 GB of memory while you have 8 GB of memory. In such case, when you are sure your memory will almost never fill to 8 GB you can really spare out a lot of SSD writes by disabling the page file without any drawback.

When you do run out of memory (e.g., if you run virtual machines), you don't want your computer to thrash your SSD... So in essence this is to save to SSD on the long run

Ok thanks that makes sense. I know how the swap works but I didn't realize it put that much stress on the SSD. Thanks for the heads up!

I'm bit confused by what you actually mean here ??

What I mean is that it seems like always 20% is used by some mysterious process that isn't visibly taking the memory.

Let's say I have 4GB installed on my computer then 20% of that is a bit over 800MB. If I on the other hand have 6GB installed then 20% of that is a bit over 1200MB. So it seems to scale with the memory amount installed. I just don't know what it is. :S

Once you disable the paging file on SSD, select you HDD and set it to "System Managed Size" which means means windows manages it and it would automatically set the amount to the physical memory you have..... ie,, if you have 4 GB, it would set it to 4-8GB and if you have 6GB then it would be 6-12GB.

If you are confident enough, you could also set it manually after looking at you usage at resmon

Alright thanks!

Are you adding up the Commit or the Working set... Because the working set is what you need to add up... as it shows the amount of physical memory used by the processes. Commit is amount of virtual memory used by the processes..... from the image you posted... it looks ok to me..

Well I think neither of them really do add up to the 800MB used. All of the processes running are visible in the image I posted last. As you can see with some simple addition that they do not add up to the 899MB usage which is stated at the bottom but a bit over 662MB. So where has the 237MB gone? 237MB isn't bad but anyway. Now that I counted with Chrome open it actually added up. All the small processes added to eachother actually is a lot more than it looks.

Still I wonder about the idleusage though. Where is some of it gone. Hidden processes or what? :S

 

[centaur78]

Well the one of the ways to check you memory allocation apart from resmon is with prefmon or RAMMap . With RAMMap you could check the allocation of the memory on the first tab (Use Counts)..... look into AWE (Address Windowing Extensions) .... it should by default have no allocation ,,, but if you do have allocation on them..... then there is a high chance .. you do have Sql server or application that used AWE api ... which use this space to work. If thats the case then ... there is a high chance why Resmon or taskmanager may not account for it as these are locked pages ....

To make it more technical if AWE is there, below is the excerpt from the microsoft

"One of the interesting effects for any application that uses the AWE API is that any memory allocated with these APIs is not part of the process working set. Therefore, Windows considered this memory as “locked” (i.e. cannot be paged to disk). Therefore, the user who launches an app that uses the AWE API must have the “Locked Pages in Memory” privilege (for example the service account for SQL Server) set."

Let me know if you need more info

 

[BenLind]

Thanks centaur78!
I checked with RAMMap and I don't have anything allocated to AWE so I guess it's not that. Maybe Chrome just uses more memory than Mozilla which I used before a lot. I don't know why it doesn't seem to add up when idle and why it seemed to scale with the memory installed though.

Maybe I'm also just used to the fact that (at least that I can remember) Windows Xp never had 800mb of RAM in use when idle.

Thanks for all the help though, I appreciate it!

 

[centaur78]

Anytime ...

do remember the memory management in Win 7 is way better and efficient than what it was in Win XP and Win Vista..

I hope we have answered all your queries...

 

[BenLind]

Yeah well I guess it is more efficient in using the memory it has available but it sure does have loads more internal processes hogging resources. :/