Lack of resources when using 80% of ram.

Anyone suggest any reason why system would start behaving like it was running out of memory when there is still plenty free?

I have 1Gb ram and have the suggested amount of 1533Mb paging file set as initial and max on a separate dedicated partition on a little-used drive.

Task Manager shows Commit Charge as xxxM/2459M, and when xxx get around the 800 mark the system starts behaving oddly, like icons start disappearing, clicking a drive in an Explorer window does nothing, starting a program doesn't progress into the next stage like it normally does.

I have tried borrowing another 1Gb from another PC and this failure still happens round about the same memory usage even with the 2Gb of ram.

Just wondered if there are any other system limits that may need changing - handles, threads etc?

Have read the stuff about virtual memory in the Windows Help but it doesn't (help).

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

Try getting rid of the MAX on VM.
It is never a good idea to do this, and there are no associated benefits.

 

I am guessing you are a power user, and have a silly number of windows open on multiple monitors. There is a system resource, generically called 'desktop heap' (although its really more than that), that holds all the allocations for things like GDI objects, windows, icons, etc.. Its readily exhausted, but can be tuned.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ SessionManager \ SubSystems ! Windows

It will look like this:
%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

Make the bolded number biggest in 1024 incriments. You can go up to 9126 (at least, works for me), but once you get much bigger than that, you can begin to cause some interesting and quite difficult to track down problems. I'd recommend you start at 4096 and work up as needed. 9126 works for me with 100ish windows on the task bar.

 

OK thanks for those suggestions.
The max vm setting seems to be one of those things that some say you should set, some say not. Have read various theories in other forums on this.
Will try it though.
The Registry tweak seems worth trying, I use Nvidia's multiple desktop feature and have 14 desktops all stuffed with lots of different apps so it would seem logical that I have blown some limit.
Thanks again.

 

Thanks JoeHobart, that Registry change seems to have worked as you said.
Changed it to 4096 and am currently running with
Commit charge: 1032M/2059M
and none of the problems I was getting before.
Presumably as I go over the 1Gb boundary I will be experiencing a lot more rolling out to the page file so it might be worth putting the ram up to 2Gb again.

 

great, i was a little concerned that the nvidia thingy wouldnt be using the default heaps. Glad it turned out. 2G is a lot of memory, I only have 1g on my quad headed development box, with 100+ windows open all day long, and im not going into swap much. What are you doing thats burning that much ram?

 

Yes I know, it is a bit extravagant, mostly just due to laziness and making full use of the multiple desktops.
It's just nice to keep a separate desktop for each function and leave all the apps loaded as the PC is permanently on.
Currently have Paint Shop Pro, Winword, emule, PowerDVD, DVDDecrypter, Mailwasher, Digiguide, Cool Edit, Yahoo Messenger, Outlook - their Peak Mem is just over 400Mb.
Have just loaded QuickPar - that's using another 220Mb.
Digiguide - a TV/cable/satellite program lister - is (I suspect) badly written and on performing a search it gobbles up ram at an alarming rate.
I also used to run Newsbin Pro but that used to take up so much ram that I had to move it to another machine.
The Nvidia multiple desktop feature is awesome once got to grips with, only trouble is, if you load IE then all instances of Windows Explorer in all the various desktops promptly just get closed!
So I have to run IE on other PCs controlled via desktop sharing in other desktops, apart from that I would be lost without it.
Cheers and thanks again for your help.