Serious memory problem on laptop.

[salvinorum]

I am not sure what is happening to my laptop lately. It all started about 2 weeks ago. I cannot track down what, if anything, happened at that time to cause this problem.

Anyhow, here is the problem in a nutshell. After 12 hours or so, or after returning from sleep, my laptop gives me a "low memory" message, and wants to close programs. Sometimes it reverts to 640x480 res automatically and just sits there waiting to be restarted. I have a on-screen memory viewer and at this time it says mem use is over 95%.

I have tracked the problem to the following: In Resource Monitor, under Physical Memory, when the problem occurs, the "Modified Memory", "Orange" bar, is well over 2.5GB. When I hover over this, it says Modified mem is "memory whose contents must be written to disk before it can be used". When the laptop is working fine, and on my other computers, Modified mem is never over 200MB, so this is definitely the problem. Why is it not writing this memory to disk? Why does it get to 2GB in the first place? I just don't get it.

What can I do? Please help.

Here are the specs: Dell Studio 17, dual core proc., 4GB memory, Windows 7 Ultimate 64.

Again, I ran this system for about 5 months the same way as now, and this problem just started showing up 2 weeks ago, and since then, it happens every day, and I have to restart (putting the laptop to sleep is no longer an option, neither is leaving it on for any length of time, and I hate that.)

 

[jfar]

Hi, try this first, type mem into the Start Search Box and at the Top of the Menu you will see.
Windows Memory Diagnostic, run it .

 

[brady]

Are there any applications/processes still open and running when the machine enters the "sleep" mode?

 

[zigzag3143]

I am not sure what is happening to my laptop lately. It all started about 2 weeks ago. I cannot track down what, if anything, happened at that time to cause this problem.

Anyhow, here is the problem in a nutshell. After 12 hours or so, or after returning from sleep, my laptop gives me a "low memory" message, and wants to close programs. Sometimes it reverts to 640x480 res automatically and just sits there waiting to be restarted. I have a on-screen memory viewer and at this time it says mem use is over 95%.

I have tracked the problem to the following: In Resource Monitor, under Physical Memory, when the problem occurs, the "Modified Memory", "Orange" bar, is well over 2.5GB. When I hover over this, it says Modified mem is "memory whose contents must be written to disk before it can be used". When the laptop is working fine, and on my other computers, Modified mem is never over 200MB, so this is definitely the problem. Why is it not writing this memory to disk? Why does it get to 2GB in the first place? I just don't get it.

What can I do? Please help.

Here are the specs: Dell Studio 17, dual core proc., 4GB memory, Windows 7 Ultimate 64.

Again, I ran this system for about 5 months the same way as now, and this problem just started showing up 2 weeks ago, and since then, it happens every day, and I have to restart (putting the laptop to sleep is no longer an option, neither is leaving it on for any length of time, and I hate that.)

could be a number of things. Memory leak in an app, small page file, etc

You can check in event viewer (type eventvwr in search) go to the windows log>application tab and look for critical errors that contain the low memory tag. If there are none there try the system tab for the same.

Let us know the results

Ken

 

[Dom]

Yes, try the help from others first, but the last possibility would have been that you downloaded a virus accidentally.
Download this malware scanner and take a scan. See if it comes up with anything.

You may have downloaded a virus 2 weeks ago when the problems first started appearing.

 

[whs]

A snip of your Task Manager performance tab would be helpful.

 

[salvinorum]

Hi guys, thanx for the help.. Sorry I'm late in responding, but for some reason I didn't get an email that there were any responses. I will try what you have said.

Actually, the problem got even worse, now after a few hours, the modified mem would go to over 2GB, and as I watch the Resource Monitor, every second it would increase by 1MB or so, and just keep on increasing, from 100MB right up to over 2GB until it cannot run anymore.

However, this morning I changed the paging file from system managed, to custom size, and put it minimum 4GB and max 12GB, and I've run the system since then (over 12 hours now), and I just checked the Resource Monitor, and it says the modified mem is at 64MB, and its hovering there, plus or minor 2MB every few seconds, but its not increasing. I may have solved it, but I'll check in the morning tomorrow after it sleeps to see again.

I also got some memory software (Memory Improve Master, and Ram Saver Pro), and if the above won't work, I'll try to install those.

I'll write an update tomorrow.

If the problem is there in the morn, I'll take a snapshot and show you exactly what is going on.

BTW, if I install Malwarbytes anti-malware software, do I run it in the background as well? What does that replace? Do I stop Windows Defender if I use that? How about the Avast anti-virus software I'm currently using?

 

[Frostmourne]

Hi guys, thanx for the help.. Sorry I'm late in responding, but for some reason I didn't get an email that there were any responses. I will try what you have said.

Actually, the problem got even worse, now after a few hours, the modified mem would go to over 2GB, and as I watch the Resource Monitor, every second it would increase by 1MB or so, and just keep on increasing, from 100MB right up to over 2GB until it cannot run anymore.

However, this morning I changed the paging file from system managed, to custom size, and put it minimum 4GB and max 12GB, and I've run the system since then (over 12 hours now), and I just checked the Resource Monitor, and it says the modified mem is at 64MB, and its hovering there, plus or minor 2MB every few seconds, but its not increasing. I may have solved it, but I'll check in the morning tomorrow after it sleeps to see again.

I also got some memory software (Memory Improve Master, and Ram Saver Pro), and if the above won't work, I'll try to install those.

I'll write an update tomorrow.

If the problem is there in the morn, I'll take a snapshot and show you exactly what is going on.

Memory savers are junk, they free up chunks of memory block by block - go through the troubleshooting guide in my sig - it should pinpoint your issue. I'd start by adding memory counters to perfmon.msc. Also, 2GB or 3GB of memory isn't enough.

 

[hubris]

Memory savers are junk, they free up chunks of memory block by block - go through the troubleshooting guide in my sig - it should pinpoint your issue. I'd start by adding memory counters to perfmon.msc.

+1

 

[whs]

Memory savers are junk, they free up chunks of memory block by block - go through the troubleshooting guide in my sig - it should pinpoint your issue. I'd start by adding memory counters to perfmon.msc.

+1

+2
I would bet your problem is solved. It was a pagefile problem. And for your antivirus I highly recommend to use the free MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials). It is great and I think most people would agree.

 

[salvinorum]

I used to use Mem Improve Master, then I noticed that my paging file would continue to increase over time, so I uninstalled it and noticed that Win7 actually handles mem way better then any memory improving software. I just thought if nothing else worked on my laptop...

Anyhow, i'm about to check my laptop, just woke up, I'll report back once I see whats going on.

 

[salvinorum]

Ok I just woke up the laptop around an hour ago, and did some web surfing and skype talking before checking the resource monitor.

And, while the Modified memory is hovering about 360MB (a big improvement over 2-3GB, but still 5x what it should be, as on my other computers its always around 60-70MB).

However, its definitely not fixed. Remember before I was saying I had to increase the paging file. Well, when I check "Commit" in Task Manager, its not even in MB!! Its in GB, and it says 9/11, this is just insane (remember, I put 11GB as a max paging file). When I check my two other computers (both running Win7U64, both with 3GB ram which is less then the laptop, and both with max paging files of 5GB which is much less), Commit is 1880MB (out of 5GB), and this is after over 10 days being up constantly, gaming and everything else.

So, something is definitely wrong with writing memory to disk, and I can't figure it out. I'm going to the auto-show now, when I get back, I'll run that malware proggy and whatever else I can think of, and check back here for any new information.

BTW, my laptop has 4GB of physical mem, and its only used for surfing, skype, email and such things, no gaming at all, and once in a blue moon a word processor or excel, thats it. This truly makes no sense.

Thanx.

 

[salvinorum]

Just got home from the auto show to find my laptop crashed completely, still running but with monitor off, and nothing would bring the screen up. Reset it and its fine now, but obviously this is a much more serious problem then I thought originally.

Something is preventing the virtual memory from dissipating, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the same is true of modified memory, although that starts getting bigger only after virtual memory is full. No matter how big I set the "max" setting for virtual memory, it gets full eventually, even at 12GB, after which its only a matter of time before a crash, as my laptop starts running out of memory completely.

 

[jfar]

Hi, Run Memtest as was suggested to you yesterday, and then run the Malwarebytes program.

 

[salvinorum]

UPDATE!! Some good news, at last. Memtest and Malwarebytes did not find anything wrong. I finally lost my mind and decided to try one last thing before I reinstall windows completely. I decided to go to msconfig and uncheck all startup proggies and all non-ms-services. And voila, no more memory problems, its been running for hours now, perfectly. About 1.5GB page file usage, steady, and less then 20MB modified memory, steady.

So, now, I just have to check everything back one by one and find the culprit. Unless there is a better idea.

 

[Dom]

Yes, process of elimination is the best option right now.Hope you find which one is causing this

 

[salvinorum]

Well, its fixed for now. I have begun the slow process of bringing programs back one by one, and waiting a long time between each, and so far, all have passed. I think I'm pretty much done, the other 10 or so that are left I won't even bring back at all, I never needed them anyway, they were from the original Dell system which I have updated with aftermarket alternatives. I just clicked Google Desktop and PerfectDisk back on, and if these two pass, I'm back in business.

It's only too bad that I won't be able to know and/or tell you what the culprit was.

 

[jfar]

That's good news, leave them all unticked except your Anti Virus one, the rest only slowdown your startup.

 

[salvinorum]

Man its running awesome now.. Physical mem never goes above 1.5GB usage, virtual mem never above 2GB comit, and MODIFIED mem which is the one I had the probs with never goes above 50MB!! The system is flying now.

I am running everything again that I need to, except an anti-virus that is the only proggy I have not put back yet. I haven't decided on which one yet. I ran avast before, but just in case that was my problem, I'd rather try something other then Avast. AVG, Avira or MS Essentials.. we'll see.

 

[jfar]

Great News.