Low on memory error? But not low on memory...

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Kulith

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2009
Messages
259
While playing borderlands today I kept getting this error popping up:

wleu03.png


According to task manager, Borderlands was using up about 1.3GB of system RAM. Following it was TeaTimer.exe with 90mb, MsMpEng.exe with 70, and chrome.exe with 60, and so on...

Total usage was at 75% using 3.05GB, out of my 4GB installed total. so why am I getting this message? It keeps minimizing Borderlands...

This windows installation is about a week old only. Virtually no bloatware at all.

My rig:
Abit IP35 Pro
intel q6600 @ stock
evga GTX 260 core 216 @ stock
OCZ Vertex 60GB
OCZ 4x1GB DDR2 800
Corsair 750W

Edit: windows 7 x64
 
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450 said:
Enable the page file.
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Bingo. Some applications need the pagefile, no matter how much RAM you have in your system. I always let Windows manage the size of the swap.

Spybots teatimer is buggy and can cause lots of other issues...I'd kill the resident protection of Spybot.
 
You didn't mention which OS you were running and 32-bit or 64-bit, but I imagine B's a 32-bit app anyway...

If it's a 32-bit OS, isn't the OS itself limited to 2GB of RAM usage, and each app limited to 2GB of RAM usage? So it doesn't take much with a swap file before something might not like something. Then you have to remember your video card is part of your addressable memory, so that decreases the RAM you can use, too... I think the 260 has 768MB, so your 3.05GB of usage plus the video card RAM, you're hitting 4GB...

Even though I have 8GB of RAM, I still constantly can get OOM errors on certain 32-bit apps that want to use tons of RAM when they hit their 32-bit 2GB RAM limit, although I'm still at less than 50% (less than 4GB) of RAM used, and have over 4GB unused.

(So, yeah, don't turn off your swap file... I doubt mine's ever really even used, but I'm sure Vista wouldn't like it much if I turned it off...)
 
4GB Installed is not all usable on 32bit. You'll only be able to use 3-3.5gb of that depending on your video card and other devices.
 
Tolyngee said:
You didn't mention which OS you were running and 32-bit or 64-bit, but I imagine B's a 32-bit app anyway...

If it's a 32-bit OS, isn't the OS itself limited to 2GB of RAM usage...
Click to expand...

32bit OS can address up to 3.3 to 3.5 Gigs of RAM (Depending on how much vRAM you have). For example, most of the time, if you have a system with 4GB of RAM on a 32bit OS with a video card that has 512mb of RAM; typically the OS will be addressing 3.5GB.

ambientZ said:
4GB Installed is not all usable on 32bit. You'll only be able to use 3-3.5gb of that depending on your video card and other devices.
Click to expand...

Correct.
 
Either way, that message is popping up because you're low on virtual memory. It's especially prone to popping up when the page file is disabled. Re-enable it, because it's not doing any harm.
 
Sorry I forgot to mention it's windows 7 64bit so no 4GB limit.

The obvious reason I disabled the page which nobody mentioned is that I'm low on space. My 60GB vertex with 10GB unallocated for gc, windows, visual studio, office, software, and borderlands leaves me with 15GB free.

I'd rather not sacrifice 4GB more just to get rid of an error message. I'll try with just a 1GB page file see how it goes.
 
Kulith said:
Sorry I forgot to mention it's windows 7 64bit so no 4GB limit.

The obvious reason I disabled the page which nobody mentioned is that I'm low on space. My 60GB vertex with 10GB unallocated for gc, windows, visual studio, office, software, and borderlands leaves me with 15GB free.

I'd rather not sacrifice 4GB more just to get rid of an error message. I'll try with just a 1GB page file see how it goes.
Click to expand...

Are you really needing that 15gb anytime soon? What's the big deal? If space is at premium, run Diskcleaner, turn off browser caching or anything like that. Not your system critical function like virtual memory.
 
ambientZ said:
4GB Installed is not all usable on 32bit. You'll only be able to use 3-3.5gb of that depending on your video card and other devices.
Click to expand...

In a 32bit environment most applications can only access a maximum of 2GB minus some other BS.
 
Azhar said:
Are you really needing that 15gb anytime soon? What's the big deal? If space is at premium, run Diskcleaner, turn off browser caching or anything like that. Not your system critical function like virtual memory.
Click to expand...

Yup. Set it to system managed size..and enjoy problem free computing..never having to revisit this issue again. Kinda something I'd desire.

So many people say to go disable your virtual memory....but many many years of doing computers/IT consulting for a living, I've seen enough of these exact situations to say "Why bother"...not to mention you get zero performance gain by disabling the pagefile..no matter how much RAM your system has.

And if this error caused you at least 1 minute of sitting there scratching your head and bummed that your game CTD'd..well, it wasn't worth it was it?
 
Compress your vertex man! You'll gain a good amount of space and your computer won't slow down.

Also I run a 250MB page file and don't experience any problems. You could start there and work your way up. Though 1GB seems about good. Even 500MB.

Also right click as admin & open command prompt and type

powercfg -h off

Then reboot

Windows 7 doesn't always automatically delete the hibernate file even if you change the power settings. At least so I've encountered. That will give ya another few gigs.

Disable recycle bin. And set system restore to 1GB max.

Then download ccleaner and have fun. also windirstat you will enjoy.

If you're looking to do some more exploring on really trimming things down while maintaining near full functionality there are more things we could do, though it would require a fresh install. Possibly something to think about for next time.
 
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RCGodward said:
Do you have another hard drive in your system? Throw the page file on that.
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Why would you want to put page files on a mechanical drive when he has an SSD drive? It'd defeat the purpose.
 
Kulith said:
The obvious reason I disabled the page which nobody mentioned is that I'm low on space. My 60GB vertex with 10GB unallocated for gc, windows, visual studio, office, software, and borderlands leaves me with 15GB free.
Click to expand...
That's FAR from obvious. My suggestion? Do away with the game, or, if this is a tower, throw in a second drive to run the game off of. If you new you were going run games on this PC, why get a drive too small for your needs?
 
Although SSD's are awesome, I think you'd get far more utility from a 640GB WD drive or similar high speed drive.

EDIT: I know SSD vs. Mechanical drives are a big speed difference, but I'd rather have 500GB+ space over 60GB, especially since new games are huge.
 
DeaconFrost said:
That's FAR from obvious. My suggestion? Do away with the game, or, if this is a tower, throw in a second drive to run the game off of. If you new you were going run games on this PC, why get a drive too small for your needs?
Click to expand...

You misunderstood me. It might not have been obvious that I'm running out of room, but It should have been obvious that the only reason to disable the page file is to save space.

Azhar said:
Are you really needing that 15gb anytime soon? What's the big deal? If space is at premium, run Diskcleaner, turn off browser caching or anything like that. Not your system critical function like virtual memory.
Click to expand...

Well the vertex uses free space for garbage collection. More free space = less performance drop. I run ccleaner religiously.

450 said:
Although SSD's are awesome, I think you'd get far more utility from a 640GB WD drive or similar high speed drive.

EDIT: I know SSD vs. Mechanical drives are a big speed difference, but I'd rather have 500GB+ space over 60GB, especially since new games are huge.
Click to expand...

I have a WHS machine with several TB's to store my files. Using an ssd as a boot drive to install my software is a perfect setup, and 60GB is the sweet spot. 1 game installed at a time isn't a big deal. I don't play more than 1 game at a time.

Anyway, like I said, I'll be testing with 1GB page file, although even that feels like wasted space to me.
 
Get a pagefile.

Well the vertex uses free space for garbage collection. More free space = less performance drop. I run ccleaner religiously.
Click to expand...
The Page File doesn't need to be 4GB. All it needs is to be there. My PF is 512MB, and that's fine for my system even though I have 6GB total memory and 3.25 visible in OS.

EDIT: I know SSD vs. Mechanical drives are a big speed difference, but I'd rather have 500GB+ space over 60GB, especially since new games are huge.
Click to expand...
Unless your game thrashes the HDD like WoW, I don't really see the point of putting it on an SSD. You get 20-25% off loading times; so what? It's not as if 4 seconds when you're not even playing the game are going to kill you. A page file is an arguably far more important addition to an SSD than a game in terms of performance increases.

Why would you want to put page files on a mechanical drive when he has an SSD drive? It'd defeat the purpose.
Click to expand...
I'm not really sure that the page file will be accessed all that much anyway. Having such a small PF is just to improve compatibility for programs that really don't like playing nice without one.
 
ambientZ said:
4GB Installed is not all usable on 32bit. You'll only be able to use 3-3.5gb of that depending on your video card and other devices.
Click to expand...

I do wonder how much memory you'll have left if you had three GTX480's installed and you were running 32bit :D
 
I do wonder how much memory you'll have left if you had three GTX480's installed and you were running 32bit
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lol, probably none...someone with tri-SLI 480s should install a 32-bit OS and see what happens.
 
I get the low memory message with 4 GB and a windows managed pagefile.
Lenovo Yoga 11s Win 8.1 64 Haswell 4210Y, 128 GB SSD with 25 GB free. Also am using a Sandisk USB 3.0 Extreme 64 GB as a second drive (Average read speed 170 MPS) so its fast enough. I am considering an 8.1 pro upgrade to use group policy editor to turn off message. Not availble on standard 8.1 Don't want to spend the cash though.
 
Kulith said:
Sorry I forgot to mention it's windows 7 64bit so no 4GB limit.

The obvious reason I disabled the page which nobody mentioned is that I'm low on space. My 60GB vertex with 10GB unallocated for gc, windows, visual studio, office, software, and borderlands leaves me with 15GB free.

I'd rather not sacrifice 4GB more just to get rid of an error message. I'll try with just a 1GB page file see how it goes.
Click to expand...

as tough as this sounds, you should get a bigger drive and be generous when you estimate your needs in the future :)
 
Proxy said:
32bit OS can address up to 3.3 to 3.5 Gigs of RAM (Depending on how much vRAM you have). For example, most of the time, if you have a system with 4GB of RAM on a 32bit OS with a video card that has 512mb of RAM; typically the OS will be addressing 3.5GB.



Correct.
Click to expand...

Tolyngee was half right. On 32-bit OS any process is limited to max 2Gb of memory addressing so while the OS can use more than that, a game for example falls within the limitation.
 
With an SSD, I think the best thing to do is set min/max. The min can be 400MB and the max be equal to your ram. If you have 16GB of ram, the PF will sit at 400MB until you need it. I'll gladly give up 400MB of disk space if that means having a more stable system, even if you haven't experienced issues without a PF.
 
To me it sounds like your video card is running low on vram.....i would get that error all the time when i was still sporting geforce 280's and playing bf3 or certain games...and i have not had it since upgrading my videocard:)
 
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