Vista Home runs out of memory

Hi all,

I've got an Acer Aspire 5920 1.66Ghz T5450 Core2 Duo, 2GB DDR <358 MB Intel GMA X3100 with Vista Home on it. It'll run programs quite happily for 30-60 minutes (depending on paging file size), then up comes an error "Microsoft Windows Programs, Insufficient Memory, save your work, exit and restart programs to fix it".

Watching the Task Manager's Performance graphic, the physical memory use creeps up and up until the error appears. Then the best thing to do is disconnect from the mains and remove the battery from the laptop cos nothing else works as well.

I've thrown all my artillery at it:
Memtestx86
CCleaner
AVG
Spybot
SuperAntiSpyware
Malwarebytes Antimalware
Defrg, ScanDisk /f
Memory paging file administered by Windows, assigned by me, the larger the file, the slower the memory "leak"

Have disabled:
Internet Printing Client,
Tablet PC optional components,
Windows Meeting Space,
ReadyBoost,
Windows Error Reporting Service,
Windows DFS Replication Service,
Remote Differential Component,
UAC
and SuperLaunch (is that what it was called?)

Makes no difference. Any suggestions?
Cheers

 

When did this error start occurring? Did you install any new applications right before this started happening?

 

What type of programs are you running when this happens?
What size is your Virtual Memory size?

 

1) can't pinpoint exactly when this started happening.
2) There are "no" programs running. The OS starts, all the little Acer processes get going, AVG, MSN & Yahoo Msngr startup (and disabling Msngr at startup makes no difference)
3) Virtual Memory is currently 2337MB on C:, nothing on D:, managed by the OS. As I said above, upping the VM file size just slows the leak down.

Just found a brand new error:
Windows Defender Error: 0x8050800d. Could not show some elements of the history. Wait a few minutes and try again. If this doesn't work, delete the history and try again.

Sounds like another rootin' tootin' rebootin' to me. Or rather, take the battery out cos it ain't respnding to commands.
Rebooted, and I've stopped the Windows Defender Service but the memory use is still creeping up. Defender ran a scan a couple of hours ago, this may have prompted the error.

 

...

I've read of inherent kernel leaks in certain flavors of Vista, especially when running specific software or when performing obscure operations within Windows...

There's even a hotfix from Microsoft concerning the leak, but you might be advised to read the KB article: this particular patch is concerned with a memory leak in the Windows OLE component, which may not be your problem...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942435/en-us

...

 

Thanks for the tips, can anyone help with diagnosing the problem? I know that svchost is using way more memory that it should, and that a big part of that is the networking service.

Don't ask me how I know that cos I can't remember where I saw it. I've been on this for a week now and it's all starting to go fuzzy...

 

Maybe keeping the Task Manager Process tab open will reveal where the leak is. Set it to show the PID so it can be traced.

 

The PID appears on the Services tab, not on the Process tab.
Not sure what you mean by "so it can be traced"

 

Showing the PID on the Processes tab is just View > Select Columns, but skip that for the moment. If it is possible to find the process that is leaking by studying the Processes tab, then the Properties of that process will lead you to the program that owns it.

Another possible source would be the Memory section of Vista's Resource Monitor.

 

Hi again,

Thanks for that, I've now got PID showing on the processes tab, and all processes ordered by memory use. It's been nearly an hour and there's nothing obvious creeping up.

Physical memory is at 74% and stable, the performance tab seems to have stabilized at 1.49 GB physical memory usage, and I'm off to bed. I'll post an update in the morning.

Continuing thanks.

 

Let's just hope it stays that way. But instead of going straight to sleep, have a think whether there might be another program you normally have running that isn't running at the present time. A memory leak isn't going to fix itself I wouldn't think.