System Out of Memory / Low Physical Memory

boocake

boocake

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2015
Messages
170
Hi all,

I've been trying to troubleshoot an issue my cousin in Chicago has been experiencing. He received a late Xmas gift from me in the form of a 1TB SSD, and he and upgraded from SLI GTX 680s to a single GTX 1080 FE. I believe he also performed a complete re-install of Windows shortly after installing the above items so that he can finally game at decent settings @ 1440p.

He re-installed some games as well, and this is where things got a bit wonky. While we were playing Ghost Recon: Wildlands you can hear the windows dialog box sound pop up and he would receive something along the lines of "low physical memory". He'll be able to play Ghost Recon: Wildlands for awhile, before it outright crashes to desktop. Now we thought this was specifically isolated to that one particular game - every now and then he'll be able to play for 10-15 minutes before it exits direct to desktop.

I found some thread on the Ubisoft forums about clearing out the temp folder, in addition to running the client as an administrator and the like that he tried. We thought that fixed it (in addition to reducing game settings from Ultra to 'Very High'). He's on an 3770k (stock speed settings), with 16gb of memory. While playing the game, he had task manager running in the background on top and took note of the memory usage- it seemed relatively all in line with about 52% of RAM in use. We kind of concluded that it was probably just the game itself that was buggy. However, just the other day, he had attempted to play Playerunknown's Battlegrounds when he received the same message in that game as he did for Ghost Recon: Wildlands which just threw up all sorts of red flags for him in terms of playing.

I'm hoping his memory didn't go bad, but at this stage, I'm not too sure myself. The only real changes that were made was the installation of a new SSD and videocard, and a clean re-install of Windows. In between this, he had re-installed the game (Ghost Recon: Wildlands) just for good measure.

Does anyone have any further advice/troubleshooting for me to relay to him regarding his memory? I'm presuming memtest is obviously something he'd want to perform. (apologies if I'm in the wrong forum for this)
 
You can run windows memory diagnostic.

Just press the windows key and then type "windows memory diagnostic" And give it a go.

Also, did you RESTART the PC between the runs where the two different games crashed? If Ghost Recon: Wildland has a memory leak, it could affect other games after it crashed.

My only other thought is your friend's copy of Windows has been hacked, so if the memory test comes up okay I'd nuke and reinstall Windows. Are these legal games, or torrent downloads?


Could also be the SSD. What's the brand?

Several manufacturers offer custom applications that will check the health of the device.
 
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Check pagefile settings in Windows. Some people like to disable it when they run their system on a ssd, but some programs won't work then. I've tried this myself and had a few games crash with out of memory errors before. So that's one possibility.
 
Pandur said:
Check pagefile settings in Windows. Some people like to disable it when they run their system on a ssd, but some programs won't work then. I've tried this myself and had a few games crash with out of memory errors before. So that's one possibility.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much! I think he has his pagefile settings set to be automatically handled, but not quite sure. Will see if adjusting the settings might alleviate this issue!
 
Just a quick update - my cousin ended up removing pagefile, but immediately crashed upon attempting to start Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Aside from completely removing pagefile, he had set it up on his HDD at 4096 min and 4096 max, but still experienced problems. At this stage, I suggested he go ahead and get his modules checked - though admittedly, I'm a bit perplexed that something that was working quite well is suddenly acting up on him is extremely puzzling at best.
 
pagefile automatic should be fine. DO NOT MESS WITH IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

Also, did you run Windows Memory Diagnostic or not? It's a test utility that MICROSOFT INCLUDED so you don't have to bother with boot disks and memtest.

Just click the start button and type "Windows Memory Diagnostic". There should be only one result.
 
I'll have to ask him, though I don't think he ran Windows Memory Diagnostic. He just ran a memtest overnight and it came out with no errors after 40 passes or so. I also need to clarify with him regarding his W10 install - I initially mentioned he did a clean re-install of W10, but I think he did have a hiccup which might have involved an upgrade from W7 to W10 or the like.

Aside from the above, still at a loss for words of what could be the root cause.

I'll text him about Windows Memory Diagnostic, however. Thanks very much for the suggestion!

EDIT: Got a text mesage from him regarding an inquiry I sent to him earlier regarding his W10 install. Apparently his clean install of W10 comprised of an upgrade to W10 from 8.1 Pro (W10 Creator's edition from the Insider program)

EDIT2: Just to clarify, x64 in case it may not have been obvious.
 
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Cousin just ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic - it found no errors. :unsure:

EDIT:

He setup pagefile for all of his drives to be automatically managed. Snagged a screencap of his task manager, which I guess I'm not used to a 'committed' section, nor a 'compressed' section too.


upload_2017-5-31_13-55-13.png


Quick recap of his pagefile allocation:

upload_2017-5-31_13-56-13.png
 
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Okay, what brand is the SSD? We could have a fault in that.

Also, have you tried different drivers for the GTX 1080?
 
whateverer said:
Okay, what brand is the SSD? We could have a fault in that.

Also, have you tried different drivers for the GTX 1080?
Click to expand...

A 1TB Mushkin Reactor Eco2 drive from NewEgg, which I believe is strictly for his games. For the GTX 1080 FE, just the latest nVidia drivers off their website for W10 x64. I think he's running tests with some games in the meantime to see if he's going to be crashing again after applying those changes depicted above.
 
Hmm a 20GB Pagefile...nice.

It's probably just a memory leak causing the issue. I sometimes get a message telling me I'm running out of ram (I have 16GB of DDR4 3000) when I play Fallout 4 for 2-3 hours and have left Firefox running in the background. It tells me I'm using around 12GB and both Fallout and FFox are bigger than they should be. Happens maybe once a month or so.

For what its worth I have a 256MB pagefile. If you look up the current MS whitepapers for Pagefile it's essentially just for crashdumps and little else. Doesn't really do much for modern software. I only keep the 256MB one for any older software that still 'looks' for one.
 
Silly question: does he use Google Chrome?

I always have a large number of tabs open in Google Chrome and I get the same error when I run Chrome and Star Wars: The Old Republic on my 16GB computer.

Chrome eats RAM like candy and it has a bad habit of running in the background even when Chrome is closed.

I multimonitor so I used to have Chrome open for advice, walkthrus, etc. when playing games - I had to switch to Firefox to stop the memory issues.
 
Hey all-

Looks like at those existing settings I had posted, he was able to play without any issues at all whatsoever. I'm pretty sure the pagefile size should probably be adjusted somehow... but frankly, not quite sure what to tell him there. As for Chrome - yes, he does use Google Chrome. However, during our playthroughs when he was experiencing issues - exiting out of all apps (especially Chrome) were one of the initial things he did in attempting to troubleshoot every soft crash to desktop he was getting.
 
JammieR said:
Just press the windows key and then type "windows memory diagnostic" And give it a go. hope fully the problem will solve
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Hey, sorry - my cousin was able to execute the "windows memory diagnostic" program. It returned no errors for me when he ran it.

On a side note, his latest email to me regarding the status of his enabling pagefile across all drives resulted in a sizable 22 gig pagefile.

C = 2 x 120GB SSDs in a RAID 1
E = 2 x 1TB HDDs in a RAID 1
G = 1 x 1TB SSD
R = 1 x 65GB SSD
S = 1 x 20GB HDD -> Used to be an Xbox 360 drive. Now it's primarily a dedicated Scratch disk for Photoshop!
 

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No need for a paging file on each drive. Put one on C: and set the rest to no paging file.
 
What fixed your issues, in my opinion, is the change from a 4gb pagefile to automatic. I do not recall where I read it, as its been quite a few years, but the article suggested a pagefile AT LEAST as large as the amount of ram you have. With how common large drives are now, we rarely miss the 32gb of space nowadays.
 
auntjemima said:
What fixed your issues, in my opinion, is the change from a 4gb pagefile to automatic. I do not recall where I read it, as its been quite a few years, but the article suggested a pagefile AT LEAST as large as the amount of ram you have. With how common large drives are now, we rarely miss the 32gb of space nowadays.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised automatic across all drives chose a 20gig pagefile for him. I mentioned trying to have him set the automatic pagefile for only his C: drive, haven't heard back yet at this moment. Checking back, he does have his C: drive setup in RAID 1 across SSDs. For the most part, he's been getting these 'soft' CTDs during gaming prior to the previous changes he applied. I was hoping the 1TB SSD he had installed the games on wasn't faulty, I haven't yet suggested to him to try and check if that might have been a possible issue as whateverer may have alluded to earlier in this thread.
 
auntjemima said:
What fixed your issues, in my opinion, is the change from a 4gb pagefile to automatic. I do not recall where I read it, as its been quite a few years, but the article suggested a pagefile AT LEAST as large as the amount of ram you have. With how common large drives are now, we rarely miss the 32gb of space nowadays.
Click to expand...

They are mainly now for just crash dumps so not really necessary anymore. You only need a small one for legacy software that still looks for one.
 
daglesj said:
They are mainly now for just crash dumps so not really necessary anymore. You only need a small one for legacy software that still looks for one.
Click to expand...

So I've heard. When I went to 24gb of memory I dropped my paging file and I found normal activities had lag here and there and especially when running games and chrome. I went back to 16384 min and max and haven't had issues since.
 
auntjemima said:
So I've heard. When I went to 24gb of memory I dropped my paging file and I found normal activities had lag here and there and especially when running games and chrome. I went back to 16384 min and max and haven't had issues since.
Click to expand...

I'd say that was an issue elsewhere. A 16GB Pagefile is kind of a waste but it's your storage.

To quote the current MS White paper on Pagefiles for 64Bit Windows -

"64-bit versions of Windows and Windows Server support more physical memory (RAM) than 32-bit versions support. However, the reason to configure the page file size has not changed. It has always been about supporting a system crash dump, if it is necessary, or extending the system commit limit, if it is necessary. For example, when a lot of physical memory is installed, a page file might not be required to back the system commit charge during peak usage. The available physical memory alone might be large enough to do this. However, a page file or a dedicated dump file might still be required to back a system crash dump."

In fact it states for Windows 8 and onwards the Pagefile only needs to be big enough for the level of Crash Dump required.

Which of you select a small memory dump, is just 1MB.
 
He made another change based on the above suggestions:

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He was able to play Ghost Recon: Wildlands for about an hour without any further issues!

Thanks everyone for the ideas and suggestions!
 
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