paging while still 24GB available RAM

jakke

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Lately I've been having these annoying popups telling me I'm running out of memory, but I really don't understand it. I have 32GB of RAM and I'm currently using a little less than 8GB of it.
The popups don't indicate that I'm running out of virtual memory (paging file), but I do get system events saying e.g.
Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition. The following programs consumed the most virtual memory: Watch_Dogs_3dm.exe (8104) consumed 3199815680 bytes, uTorrent.exe (4380) consumed 237621248 bytes, and explorer.exe (3992) consumed 148795392 bytes.​

Does anybody know how to fix this? My pagefile is managed automatically and is about 4GB in size currently. With so much spare RAM, I really don't get why Windows is using my slow disk (3 disk stripe, not that slow, but still). I put in enough so I can run games without closing my virtual machines, browsers, etc. I barely ever use over 24GB so I still have plenty room for the occasional spike.

Does anybody know a solution for this problem? I know I can manually set my pagefile to 64GB if need be, but I bought RAM to be used. My disks should only be used for storage, not for paging.
 

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Most likely you have a 32bit application running that has a memory leak and is consuming the 2GB of memory which is usually made available to 32bit applications and thus throwing that error message.

Here is some reading from MS in case you think I'm crazy about the 2GB limits
Memory Limits for Windows and Windows Server Releases (Windows)
 

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You should be able to tell by looking in Task manager, yes? See anything out of the ordinary?
 

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Years ago it was found that large amounts of RAM could indeed negate the need for the swapfile [Win95/98/ME] or Paging File [WinNT4/2000 and later] but some programs looked for it when trying to install programs, needed some 'room' for decompressing files/holding temporary files while installing. Don't think that has changed much unless the folks writing programs made changes. It was found with large amounts of RAM that a small Paging File/swapfile was sufficient for the purpose.
 

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I would tend to agree with pparks1.

Unfortunately that error dialog is more than a little vague and the recommendation to close programs isn't always useful. It appears to be an attempt to make something complex understandable and in the process it has been dumbed down to the point that it looses all meaning.

When most people think of "memory" in Windows they usually mean RAM. But a shortage of RAM rarely causes errors and issues are usually confined to poor performance. And with 24.5 GB available we can pretty much rule that out. The value for "free" memory as displayed in Windows 7 Task Manager isn't relevant either.

The error more often refers to hitting the commit limit. Unfortunately this is quite difficult to describe and I will not attempt to do so. But with a commit charge of 7.7 GB and a limit of 36.4 GB that hardly seems likely, or even possible.

That leaves exhaustion of the 2 GB virtual address space of each 32 bit process. This is a very real possibility. As this is a private address space closing other processes will avail nothing.

A screenshot of Resource Monitor showing the memory tab sorted by Commit would be more useful. The disk level activity shown is really quite low. But because the graphs are scaled the limited usage tends to be emphasized.
 

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Come to think of it, I used to get a similar error purely from windows XP Mode, from allocating memory incorrectly. [DEL]Do you have any virtual Desktop Software or the like installed?[/DEL]

Duh, I knew I read that you had Virtual machines...
Check there for your memory consumption problem
 

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In addition to the above, I suggest you download: Process Lasso Portable Edition (No installation needed). This program will give you a broader view of what's going on and make it easier to find the culprit.

2014-06-16_16-09-26.png
 

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Come to think of it, I used to get a similar error purely from windows XP Mode, from allocating memory incorrectly. [DEL]Do you have any virtual Desktop Software or the like installed?[/DEL]

Duh, I knew I read that you had Virtual machines...
Check there for your memory consumption problem

Yeah, I figured that much ... but I never have any problems with my VM software (VirtualBox), I've been running it for months without any error. Even when I shut them down completely, I'm still getting the errors on other applications. I tend to believe the 32-bit application problem more that is mentioned below.
 

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In addition to the above, I suggest you download: Process Lasso Portable Edition (No installation needed). This program will give you a broader view of what's going on and make it easier to find the culprit.

View attachment 45266

I'm running out of time to test at the moment, but I'm going to investigate this later today. Thanks for the tip.
In my original request, I did post the error message in the eventlog. Both Watchdogs and utorrent are both 32-bit applications, so it does make sense what you say.
I've doubled the size of my pagefile yesterday (8GB) and I still got the error. The thing is, even if I do get the popup, I can generally keep using the applications without trouble, although utorrent sometimes stops responding (after days of continuous use).
I do think my next step will be to try and disable the pagefile. However, I've read that some applications try to write to it no matter what, so that may cause even more problems. The other concern I have, is that if I'm working with a memory leak in an application, that it's going to consume all my RAM and actually cause problems for other software that can continue to run for now.

Anyways, I'll send an update later today to see how it goes. Thanks again for all your ideas.
 

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  1. If you get a kernel panic/BSOD you need the pagefile or you can't see the log. Not a big deal.
  2. Some programs are built assuming you have one. Older programs, some old games, photoshop.

    I have 16GB of RAM and I know I won't do anything drastic to take the whole 16GB. Most of the time I see it max out to 3, 4 GB and 8,9GB if I am running both my virtual machine. However, as mentioned above, I set my pagefile 1023-1024MB.
 

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Same old, same old ... and none the wiser.
I've actually removed my pagefile completely. I'm still running low on memory while I have over 20gigs available.
I have tried the process lasso before I started playing the game and all I'm seeing is that the priority of the game has been lowered because it could affect the responsiveness from my system. The same popup comes up for low memory, the game gets windowed, I see a message in my eventlog, saying I'm running out of virtual memory and now it leaves me to wonder what it means with virtual memory. Since I've removed my pagefile (or set it so 0MB), do I still have some hidden virtual memory somewhere?
So far I have no issues running without a pagefile so I will continue to run like this, however, the problem isn't solved. The good things is though that the "leak" isn't consuming all of my ram.
memory.issues2.jpg
 

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running out of virtual memory
Historically that type message has meant the Paging File or Swapfile was not large enough. I usually solve the problem by adding a second HDD and putting the Paging File on it at the recommended 1.5 times the physical RAM [in Help on the paging file]. I've always noticed a performance improvements doing it that way, so far I've not needed to increase it.

After a night's sleep and re-reading this I should have added that I set the maximum and minimum sizes as the same, prevents fragmenting of the paging file on the HDD.
 
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Same old, same old ... and none the wiser.
I've actually removed my pagefile completely. I'm still running low on memory while I have over 20gigs available.
I have tried the process lasso before I started playing the game and all I'm seeing is that the priority of the game has been lowered because it could affect the responsiveness from my system. The same popup comes up for low memory, the game gets windowed, I see a message in my eventlog, saying I'm running out of virtual memory and now it leaves me to wonder what it means with virtual memory. Since I've removed my pagefile (or set it so 0MB), do I still have some hidden virtual memory somewhere?

I believe in this case "virtual memory" refers to the private virtual address space of the process. As far as applications are concerned that is what "memory" is. This is referred to as "virtual memory" and is all applications ever access. Applications know nothing of RAM or pagefile.

I don't believe this issue has anything to do with the amount of RAM present or size of pagefile. You could likely have terrabytes of both and still have the problem. I believe that some 32 bit process is exhausting it's private address space end that is why the problem is occurring. That is why I suggested a screenshot of Resource Monitor showing the memory tab sorted by Commit. This value is very significant and is not currently being displayed by Process Lasso. It isn't a very useful program for this kind of problem.
 

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running out of virtual memory
Historically that type message has meant the Paging File or Swapfile was not large enough. I usually solve the problem by adding a second HDD and putting the Paging File on it at the recommended 1.5 times the physical RAM [in Help on the paging file]. I've always noticed a performance improvements doing it that way, so far I've not needed to increase it.

After a night's sleep and re-reading this I should have added that I set the maximum and minimum sizes as the same, prevents fragmenting of the paging file on the HDD.

Historically, you are right, that the paging file should be 1.5 to 2 times the amount of RAM. With the recent amounts of RAM generally found in even desktop systems, this has become a completely ridiculous rule. The moment you are using even 1 time the amount of RAM in paging (e.g. an 8GB RAM system), you have a serious problem on your system and unless that paging file is located on a super fast SSD drive, you're going to have a ridiculously slow system.
 

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I believe in this case "virtual memory" refers to the private virtual address space of the process. As far as applications are concerned that is what "memory" is. This is referred to as "virtual memory" and is all applications ever access. Applications know nothing of RAM or pagefile.

I don't believe this issue has anything to do with the amount of RAM present or size of pagefile. You could likely have terrabytes of both and still have the problem. I believe that some 32 bit process is exhausting it's private address space end that is why the problem is occurring. That is why I suggested a screenshot of Resource Monitor showing the memory tab sorted by Commit. This value is very significant and is not currently being displayed by Process Lasso. It isn't a very useful program for this kind of problem.

Thanks for hammering this into me :) I'll update the thread in a moment with the requested info.
 

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I see that VirtualBox. is running. Were there any virtual machines running and if so how much memory was assigned to them?
Also not seen before is the very large commit charge. On a 32 GB system that would mean a commit limit of at least (or very close to) 32 GB. So much commit would indicate very high usage by a process, not visible in the display, or usage by a virtual machine.

The Watch_Dogs_3dm process has very high commit but not nearly high enough to explain the situation. Is this a 32 or 64 bit process? Was it running under a virtual machine?
 

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No, I've got 2 Ubuntu servers running in VirtualBox. One has 8GB assigned, the other 4GB.
The problem does not seem to be related to VirtualBox however. If I'm not running my VMs, I'm still getting the same problem with watch_dogs (which is a 32-bit app). The memory problems I'm getting are usually with utorrent or watch_dogs.
VirtualBox is completely 64-bit, both software and VMs that are running. With VMware Player, I got some memory leaks where it was using all of my RAM with the same 2 machines running, that's why I switched to VirtualBox and I've never had a memory issue with it again since then.

On superuser.com, I was reading a bit about the virtual memory as well. I didn't quite understand it, but they were talking about 3GB of private space for 32-bit applications, and something about AWE and something else to increase the space? Anyways, those were developers talking and I had a hard time understanding even half of what they were going on about. I noticed that watchdogs was using about 3GB of private space too.
 

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Now that I'm watching it again ... I do see what you mean with the commit charge running at the full 100%. I have to say, I took the screenshot after I received the error and the commit charge seems to have dropped by then. Next time, I will alt-tab before I get an error and see what the real-time values of the applications are then.
I'll keep you posted! :)
 

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On superuser.com, I was reading a bit about the virtual memory as well. I didn't quite understand it, but they were talking about 3GB of private space for 32-bit applications, and something about AWE and something else to increase the space? Anyways, those were developers talking and I had a hard time understanding even half of what they were going on about. I noticed that watchdogs was using about 3GB of private space too.

With a 64 bit OS the virtual address space of a 32 bit process is normally 2 GB, 4 GB if it is Large Address Space Aware. I would guess that it is but cannot be sure. 4 GB is a firm limit. 3 GB is the limit on a 32 bit OS, but only if a specific configuration is in use. AWE is not a setting but a programming technique. It is not simple, has numerous restrictions, and is not commonly used. Not relevant to you.

I do find it hard to believe that a 32 bit process that is Large Address Space Aware would have issues on a 64 bit OS. It seems unlikely that it would run at all on a 32 bit OS.

Most likely the cause is whatever caused the 100% commit charge.

The fact that you have uTorrent is a serious concern. Torrent sites are notorious for spreading malware. And it is not always found by anti-malware software.
 

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