There is not enough memory available for this task.....

[Darkeone]

I have a friend that is running Windows XP Home. The machine is a P4 2.4 with 512 MB, 20 GB hdd, and cd burner. He keeps getting "There is not enough memry available for this task. Please quit one or more programs to increase available memory and try again." Upon bootup. There is no error code with the message and it does not appear to cause any further problems. I've gone in and disabled several unnecessary programs from starting in msconfig and that did not work. I googled the error and I got all kinds of stuff but nothing that appeared to an issue while booting. Is there an error or log file that I can look in to see exactly where the issue may lie?

BTW, he appears to have full functional use of all of his applications and the error only shows up on boot. There doesn't seem to be any reason for the error. He hasn'tcrashed recently and he hasn't installed anything new. The error just appeared one day and will not go away.

Help, ideas totally appreciated.

[motithejrt]

Did he happen to turn virtual memory off? If not, you might need to increase the size... see if that helps. Or buy more memory.

[Darkeone]

That is something I have considered but I haven't had time to go over and "physically" check. I'll add that to my list. As far as adding more memory, he shouldn't need more than 512MB for the basic computing he does.

Virtual memory could be low or turned off. He does have 14GB of drive space available so I'll check that out.

Any other ideas?

[motithejrt]

Bad memory? Do a memtest.

[Darkeone]

I just got a screenshot from him and the pagefile is sufficient. He should be running memtest here soon. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll post the results shortly.

[ameoba]

obvious points -

* enabled pagefile?
* virus and ad/spy-ware scans?

the fact that it's only popping up at boot would indicate that something flaky is running at boot time, which hints at #2.

[Darkeone]

Well, he has Norton running on the machine since day 1 and it hasn't been an issue at all. As far as spyware scans, I did not see anything in the msconfig that indicated that spyware was starting or scanning at boot. Nor did I see any spyware scanners scanning at that time either. I'm still waiting for his memtest result screenshot. I doubt that the ram is truly bad as he doesn't have any issues with any other programs. Then again, I've never been the victim of bad ram so.....who knows.

[Audiochris]

I've run into a similar error when trying to run a program that is against a system policy. You might look into that as well. If thats the onyl error he's getting, I doubt it would be bad memory but you never know.

[Ranma_Sao]

What program is it? Where is it set to run? If he runs it from the desktop does it also do the same thing?

[KoolDrew]

Well, he has Norton running on the machine since day 1 and it hasn't been an issue at all. As far as spyware scans, I did not see anything in the msconfig that indicated that spyware was starting or scanning at boot. Nor did I see any spyware scanners scanning at that time either. I'm still waiting for his memtest result screenshot. I doubt that the ram is truly bad as he doesn't have any issues with any other programs. Then again, I've never been the victim of bad ram so.....who knows.

Most spyware will not show up in msconfig. Try usng hijackthis and maybe running an online virus scanner.

[oakfan52]

Is it a windows generated error message? does it happen in safe mode?

[Darkeone]

Good question about safemode. I didn't think of that. Of course, I've been doing all my PC doctoring for him via e-mail the last day or two. It appears to be a windows generated system message but there is no code associated with it and there isn't any program associated with the error. That's why this is so hard to figure out. I'm still waiting on him to run the tests so it may be until tomorrow before I hear back from him.

He seems to have full functionality of his regular programs and he is a real picky person when it comes to spyware. He runs Adaware and spyhunter on a regular basis. Probably more than any human ever would need to run it but he's kind of paranoid about it. Also this machine is used for his home business so personal web surfing, downloads, e-mail, music burning...etc are all done on a different PC.

[DeFex]

20gig drive??????? is it almost full?. then there would not be enough space for the paging file even if it was set up properly.

[motithejrt]

20gig drive??????? is it almost full?. then there would not be enough space for the paging file even if it was set up properly.
good point.

[Darkeone]

He experience no errors on memtest. He cleared out the event viewer logs and has rebooted several times. I'm waiting for screenies of the event viewer to see if there is anything suspicious. I had him clean it out so I could get a small sample to look at rather than weeks of stuff.

BTW, he has plenty of hdd space left and his page file is more than adequate and appears to be setup properly. He should be trying to boot into safe mode to reproduce the error also. At this point, he may have to live with the error until it causes an actual issue.

[Darkeone]

I think we've narrowed it down to the last time his ATI video card drivers were re-installed. So inb a couple of days, I will be uninstalling the card and drivers and re-installing it. What is the name of the program that helps remove ATi and Nvidia drivers?

[KoolDrew]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=752253

[Darkeone]

Driver Cleaner......I couldn't remember the name...Thanks!


We went ahead and just reformatted the whole machine by his request. After installing SP2, the video cards started right up without a hitch. No issues. It all worked out nice and clean. No errors. Woohoo. The last time I had to format and reinstall it took me forever to get his two video cards configured.

So, the problem is fixed for now.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

[QwertyJuan]

Was this an actual Windows error?? Or some spyware PRETENDING it was a windows error??

Was it followed by a picture of an alien marrying a 2-headed elvis clone??

Perhaps it just needed a bit more whipping cream in the hemilator valve??

Some of these things we'll NEVER understand......

QJ

[Phoenix86]

Bah, sorry I came late.

One of three things is (was) likely happening.

1. Page file limits. He was running out of memory and the system wasn't growing the PF due to settings (static page file) or limited HDD space. See this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=820472

2. He was running out of memory because of spyware. The system wasn't growing the PF due to the reason above, but the out of memory error was just a symptom, not the problem. The problem is, programs were running that weren't needed (spyware), if these programs weren't running he may have had enough virtual memory to do his normal tasks.

Spyware is fairly easy to clean, some are a real bitch, but learning now to avoid it is better than cleaning it up. If you just clean it up, you will likely do the same things that got it installed again, and you will have other issues down the road.

Moving from IE to another browser like FireFox is a good step.

3. He has an application with a memory error (bug). Contact the vendor.

The reason I post all this, is the second two can survive a format. If he gets re-infected with spyware, he may not have memory errors, but could have other problems. If it's bad software and he reloads it, the problem will come back.

[Darkeone]

All good tips, Thanks. After reading your response, I'm going with number 3. Even though the error did not directly point tio Ati's drivers.

This is a business machine so no software other than Java2, Adaware, Spybot are installed on this machine. He isn't even using Ofice or e-mail on this machine. When he runs adaware, he rarely finds much as the only websites he visits with the machine are stock trading websites. He is using firefox now. Hopefully that will curb any possible spyware/popup issues.. After much discussion, the error started right after he re-installed his Ati drivers and control panel which was showing an error after removing a monitor. (Weird?) Some of this I am just newly aware of. So, when he re-installed Ati again, the control panel error went away and the "there is not enough memory..." started occurring.

He had plenty of hard drive space and page file space left. Of course if the space was recovered before I could check it, I would never know if paging space was the issue.

I think the reformat/install really helped because now he is on SP2, his Norton Internet Security is clean and updated, and he has nice new drivers. Not to mention, plenty of drive space.