Does WinXP SP2 limit the number of files you can have open?

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FM 3370

Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2002
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I'll be honest here and say that I love to look at porn, lots of it and I like to keep a bunch of pictures and movies open for my viewing pleasure. Along with other programs I have a bunch of files open but I have 710MB out of 2.5GB of system memory free. I am unable to open another instance of Irfanview, Mozilla, Media Player Classic or any other program at the moment.

This got me thinking that there might be a limit to how much can be open no matter the amount of RAM you have. I currently have a Pentium 4 2.4c @ 3Ghz, 2.5GB RAM and a Radeon X800XT video card with 256MB of memory. So either I've reached a limit of how many threads can be open or I've maxed out the video memory. Does anyone know what this limit is and how to increase it? I used to use Windows 2000 and never ran into anything like this before.
 
It may be your computer politely telling you to break your addiction and find an actual woman! As for a limit to files, I don't believe there is a set limit, aside from whatever can fit into memory. Are you getting an error, or just that the application won't load anymore?
 
DeaconFrost said:
It may be your computer politely telling you to break your addiction and find an actual woman! As for a limit to files, I don't believe there is a set limit, aside from whatever can fit into memory. Are you getting an error, or just that the application won't load anymore?
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Haha....actually a hand came out from the monitor and slapped my face in the middle of my viewing.

Anyway, there is no error, just a new application fails to load. Here is a screenshot of Task Manager.

Clipboard01aaa.jpg


There are no new entries in Event Viewer, it's 10:18pm here and the last entry throughout all fields was at 8:02pm. I'm thinking if I were a graphics designer this might be a problem.
 
Sounds most likely you have maxed the video memory. Sounds like you need a bigger video card and dual monitors.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
Sounds most likely you have maxed the video memory. Sounds like you need a bigger video card and dual monitors.
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I'd rather wait for the 3008WFP to come down in price. :)

Is there a way to check how much video memory is being used on a Radeon card?
 
FM 3370 said:
I'd rather wait for the 3008WFP to come down in price. :)

Is there a way to check how much video memory is being used on a Radeon card?
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There are programs that will show video memory usage, but I can't think of them offhand, and don't have time to search tonight. Good luck, and if nobody else posts before tomorrow, I will look for something.
 
I don't think it has anything to do with video memory, unless you didn't mention games running or some 3D modeling software running, etc. What is your page file set as...your pagefile usage is very high.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I don't think it has anything to do with video memory, unless you didn't mention games running or some 3D modeling software running, etc. What is your page file set as...your pagefile usage is very high.
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No games or 3D modeling. I have Word and Outlook 2007 open, A few Firefox windows, a bunch of AVI's on Media Player Classic and JPG's with IrfanView. Also about 6 torrents seeding.

As for the page file I have it set to 1500-3800MB which seems like it's what the system defaulted to. What should it be set to in order to keep the system from using the hard drive for system memory?
 
Exactly how many files and windows do you have open before it'll stop responding?

Set your page file to 2GB and see if there's any difference.
 
lol @ this thread

anyway, I don't know about windows in particular but *nix systems do indeed set a maximum number of files that can be open. It's a safety mechanism that keeps one user from being able to completely hog the entire system. I doubt I'd ever be able to reach it, though, since on my system the default number of files is 206079.

Code: 
$ cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max 
206079

maybe windows has a similar setting? I found this article on slashdot (though it is very old, from 2001) that discusses a similar scenario. It's worth giving a read, at least.
 
This has happened to me on my work computer when I didn't even have that many programs open. I was pissed too because I was right in the middle of a long compile process. I just had to restart. Some kind of bug.
 
also, if you look at your task manager screenshot it only shows 1 cpu, but your 2.4c should show up as 2 (due to hyperthreading). It's probably an unrelated problem, but you should double check your bios settings and crap to make sure ht is being used. It would provide a noticeable boost in system responsiveness with that many programs running.

or maybe you just need to set task manager to show 1 graph per cpu, that's possible too. But I thought I'd at least point it out in case you hadn't noticed.
 
Danny Bui said:
Exactly how many files and windows do you have open before it'll stop responding?

Set your page file to 2GB and see if there's any difference.
Click to expand...

I'll play with the page file settings and see what happens.


Eva_Unit_0 said:
lol @ this thread

anyway, I don't know about windows in particular but *nix systems do indeed set a maximum number of files that can be open. It's a safety mechanism that keeps one user from being able to completely hog the entire system. I doubt I'd ever be able to reach it, though, since on my system the default number of files is 206079.

Code: 
$ cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max 
206079

maybe windows has a similar setting? I found this article on slashdot (though it is very old, from 2001) that discusses a similar scenario. It's worth giving a read, at least.
Click to expand...


Haha....everyone loves this thread. I couldn't think up a fake scenario about this problem so I thought I'd just lay it out on the table. :LOL:

Interesting link, when I look at how many windows are open there are about 60-75 windows open.




Eva_Unit_0 said:
also, if you look at your task manager screenshot it only shows 1 cpu, but your 2.4c should show up as 2 (due to hyperthreading). It's probably an unrelated problem, but you should double check your bios settings and crap to make sure ht is being used. It would provide a noticeable boost in system responsiveness with that many programs running.

or maybe you just need to set task manager to show 1 graph per cpu, that's possible too. But I thought I'd at least point it out in case you hadn't noticed.
Click to expand...


I turned Hyperthreading off in the BIOS. n00b question: Does it really make much difference?
 
Might be the handle limit, might want to look into increasing it (a registry hack I'm sure) if this is an issue you feel that strongly about, when I used to use XP I could only open like 45 Internet Explorer windows (without going anywhere near running out of ram, which was 2GBs) before app windows stopped updating properly and new IEs wouldn't open. I think I read this situation was greatly improved in Vista. This is all from memory so excuse any mistakes..
 
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