No response when 0 free memory (all cached)

[flano77]

G'Day All,
New to this forum & replies seen are of high quality so hoping you can help.
I bought my PC 12 months ago & it ran well for 12 months until some random BSOD, etc. So I reinstalled from scratch & everything was perfect for about 3-4 weeks until it kept freezing. We mainly use PC for PSE Organiser & Editor - nothing else of any substance. So in PSE8 when scrolling through lots of photos or doing lots of editing it works great for a while then stops. It seems the cached memory is NOT being released & so free = 0. What could cause this & why would I only have problem this install & not last? The only other app's installed are GoodSync, N360 & MS Office 2010. Screen shots attached of;
1 & 2 - Task Manager showing the 10min of non response & no cached memory released.
3 - Task Manager showing that if while frozen I try to page up or down through PSE CPU jumps to 100% then drops back to near nil again. Whole PC freezes too, not just PSE.
I could always reinstall again (per Dell or Adobe's great help) but certain there is another answer or things to try first.
Hoping PC specs post automatically - if not I'll put in next post.
Cheers All,
Flano..

 

[marsmimar]

Hello flano77 and welcome to the Forum. Have you run Check Disk? There are also several free diagnostics to see if you have a failing hard drive.

Hard Drive Testing Tools - Top 7 Free Hard Drive Testing Tools - Hard Drive Diagnostics

 

[flano77]

Hi marsmimar - yep - have now No bad sectors or similar found though.

 

[Dwarf]

Hi flano77 and welcome to Windows 7 Forums

Does this problem only occur when you run PSE?

Have you disabled the Paging (Swap) File? If so, reenable it. See Virtual Memory Paging File - Change - Vista Forums

 

[flano77]

Hi Dwarf - 2. Nope paging file not disabled - enabled for 9GB. 1. Yeh we only notice it after using PSE for a while. But we have nothing else on the PC to use any sort of RAM or CPU!! Outlook & Internet are only other remaining things used a lot. PSE was working perfect for past 12 months on exact same hardware (pre reinstall).

 

[Dwarf]

Is the paging using automatic or manual settings? If manual, set to automatic and see if that makes a difference.

Have you checked to see whether there is an update for PSE which might help? By PSE I take it that you mean PhotoShop Elements? If so, PSE9 is available (I notice you are using version 8) which might address this issue.

 

[flano77]

Thanks Dwarf - Yep paging is Auto - Yep I mean PhotoShop Elements 8. There are no updates for PSE but yes new version. PSE8 worked fine til now though. Not buying PSE9 just to see if that works. Could it be something completely unrelated to the cached memory, etc causing it to freeze? Just seems to work fine until Free Memory gets down to 0 (time to get there depends on what I'm doing - editing photos I get there quicker).

 

[marsmimar]

How are the internal temps? Try running free speccy to monitor temps, especially for GPU.

 

[flano77]

CPU 43, HDD 33 - these are OK aren't they?

 

[logicearth]

Has nothing to do with your RAM.

Why in the third screenshot does it show "PhotoshopElements.exe" using about 100% of your CPU?

 

[flano77]

Hi logicearth - from my limited knowledge normally when my PC freezes for a period I go into Task Manager & it would show CPU 100% or so by 1 or more processes. But this time it does not. It was like 1% CPU. However I noticed that if I continued to try to use anything while it was frozen then CPU would spike to 100% while doing so (just during keystrokes, etc) then would drop back off again. Was not sure if that was relevant or not, so included in the post. It only shows 100% when I was trying to do more while frozen.

 

[marsmimar]

CPU 43, HDD 33 - these are OK aren't they?

Those temps appear to be OK. If you have a separate graphics card you should see a 3rd temp for it.

View attachment 116467

If that temp is consistantly higher than about 100C I'd want to check it out.

How hot is too hot for a graphics card? - GameDev.Net Discussion Forums

 

[flano77]

Thanks marsmimar - looks like I don't have temp for GPU.

 

[flano77]

Well I've just been surfing net for hours now & cached memory has eased back off. It sits at about this 4-5GB more often than not when we are not doing much other than net & email. So if Win7 is happy to sit with 4-5Gb cached & 2-3Gb Free most of the time, why does it then cache 'more' memory when we are trying to use more.... Seems odd..

 

[marsmimar]

Thanks marsmimar - looks like I don't have temp for GPU.

That's strange. Don't have an explanation for that as Speccy is pretty good compiling info. Looks like you're missing some additional info as well.

View attachment 116471

Well I've just been surfing net for hours now & cached memory has eased back off. It sits at about this 4-5GB more often than not when we are not doing much other than net & email. So if Win7 is happy to sit with 4-5Gb cached & 2-3Gb Free most of the time, why does it then cache 'more' memory when we are trying to use more.... Seems odd..

If you click on the Resource Monitor button you'll get a better picture of how your memory is being allocated. 7 seems to anticipate what various programs might need and allocates memory accordingly. From a Microsoft forum: "...empty cache memory is wasted cache memory."

how to reduce memory usage

 

[flano77]

Thanks again marsmimar - Yeh I've seen the famous quote about cached memory & don't have a problem with it. Concept sounds OK to me (for what I know). I read that post & now wonder if PSE8 (& many other apps by the sound) simply have yet to adapt. If they are looking for Free memory to perform an action & it ain't there do they just die rather than asking Win7 to release more (maybe). I have no idea but something ain't right still.

My only issue is that it worked perfectly for 12 months. The only 1 thing that did change when I reinstalled was I put the OS to a new drive. It was on a Samsung 1TB (HD103UJ) & I reinstalled to a WD 2TB (20EARS). Both same speed, etc but could that be the issue for me (why it's different experience to before)? I have run chkdsk & all OK.

 

[Rhammstein]

First and foremost, are you using any kind of 3rd party program for memory management?

Can you install another version of PSE8, just to see if there's an issue with the program? Like a trial, or if not, maybe you have an older version?

This may seem unecessary, but just because this is so odd, I would do these two things, just for the heck of it because they're so simple.

sfc /scannow

Then a smart and/or quick scan using an anti-malware/spyware tool, and then a second quick scan of just the program folder for PSE8. Very unlikely, but takes 2 minutes so why not.

 

[flano77]

Hi Rhammstein - NO I certainly don't have anything else managing memory - clean install plus literally only the few apps I've mentioned. Not sure what you mean by earlier version of PSE8 & do you mean install again to different prog files folder or similar? I can try installing trial as well but I think it will detect other version & want to repair. I did run sfc /scannow & there were 0 problems reported. Also installed & ran scan using Ad-Aware with nothing but a couple of cookies disabled/removed. I'll try installing trial as well & see what it does.