Windows 2003 RAM usage issue

[keen]

For some reason, even after restarting and going to desktop, I only have 300-400mb of ram free out of my 1gb... this does not make sense to me. Especially since I have a 2gb swap file on my 3rd hdd. I've looked into the processes, and everything confirms I only have 300-400mb of ram, even though the processes I have running only take up 100-150mb at max.

At the time of taking these screens I was using a program called RAMPage to see how much ram I had and attempts to "free" more ram.

http://bhall.radiantage.com/ramuse1.jpg
http://bhall.radiantage.com/ramuse2.jpg

I run into this problem because when I play games (Battlefield 2/2142 and World of Warcraft), they often stutter and I see my HDD access light solidly on all the time. When everything's loaded into ram, and the system/OS is cached to swap finally, I run into no problems and have no loading or speed issues at all. This leads me to assume that the only thing really holding me back is my RAM for some reason. I'm somewhat stuck with 1gb until I can afford the money to upgrade however. I upgraded a while back from 512mb to solve this issue and it seems I've not made any improvement at all, which confuses me.

Anyone know of this issue? I can list system specs if I had a program that covered them all.

 

[djnes]

You don't need a program to be able to list your system specs.

I'm sure someone will come along and disagree with me, but you're trying to game on a system with 1 GB of memory....that's running Server 2003? Considering all the background services running, and how by default the emphasis is on background services, instead of applications, I can easily see why you'd be having issues.

My suggestion, which might not be what you're looking for, is to upgrade to 2 GB of memory (especially for those games) and switch to a workstation OS, like Vista or XP.

 

[MrGuvernment]

Windows server 2003 stock install is more trimmed and faster then XP or Vista, all you need to do is enable audio and 3d acceleration and you have a fat free XP install basically. (and themes if you want them)


There is that option i forgot under System / Advance / that server 2003 allocates resrouces to background apps and not others, so ya, try to change that.

1. why are you using a server OS as a gaming rig
2. what server components did you install with the OS, these wont all show under task maager or other apps. (IIS / SMTP / SNMP / DNS / DHCP , thing like that)
3. what version of windows server are you running?


a clean install of server 2003 standard with nothing else uses around 100mb of ram

 

[keen]

Windows server 2003 stock install is more trimmed and faster then XP or Vista, all you need to do is enable audio and 3d acceleration and you have a fat free XP install basically. (and themes if you want them)


There is that option i forgot under System / Advance / that server 2003 allocates resrouces to background apps and not others, so ya, try to change that.

1. why are you using a server OS as a gaming rig
2. what server components did you install with the OS, these wont all show under task maager or other apps. (IIS / SMTP / SNMP / DNS / DHCP , thing like that)
3. what version of windows server are you running?


a clean install of server 2003 standard with nothing else uses around 100mb of ram

That reason exactly is why I'm using 2003 (Base 2003, SP1) over XP, "fat free XP", although I'm thinking of going to buy XP 64-bit to more or less take advantage of my Athlon64 nForce4 board, once I have the money.

I've disabled all unused or unnecessary services and put Processor scheduling AND Memory usage. No server components (that I'm aware of) are installed. I used http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/ for a tweaking and setup guide when I first installed this.

 

[djnes]

I always have to laugh at these suggestions. When you "trim down" Server 2003, all you are doing it making it more XP-like. Why not just save time and run XP? I know it's not the golden rule, but just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do something. There are too many things out there that people do "to feel special and elite" but in reality off no real benefit...only more work, and more problems. I've never seen a set of benchmarks that shows any real advantage to running a server OS for a gaming machine either.

That being said, if you're planning on going to XP64, why not just make the jump to Vista64?

 

[calebb]

PAE FTW 8MB RAM on a 32 bit OS... /drool

That said, I don't recommend using a Server OS for general desktop use.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

Well, there's obviously a lot more going on than you realize. The figure you're actually needing to look at is not the PF Usage one (aka Commit Charge) that everyone seems to always focus on as the "RAM in use" and that's incorrect.

On that first picture, you've got what appears to be about 450MB of free physical RAM (the 463664KB figure on the right side under Physical Memory. That is what you should use as the rule of thumb when it comes to how much RAM you've got in use. Based on that, I'd say you're using roughly 575MB or so of actual physical RAM.

Windows is an OS designed to page - there was another thread recently where someone asked about paging and virtual memory and once again we (meaning those of us that actually know what we're talking about) tried to explain that: a) you can't disable the pagefile no matter what you do or what checkbox you check off, and b) the pagefile isn't virtual memory - it's just one tiny component of a much larger subsystem in Windows that we know as "virtual memory."

In your case, the second pic is leaving out a lot of useful data and it's no surprise - people just don't realize how useful Task Manager can be and never delve into it at any length, they just accept the defaults and never adjust it for better output.

Run Task Manager, click the Processes tab, then click View - Select Columns. Go in and uncheck User Name and CPU Time as those are effectively useless for most purposes. Check off the following:

Peak Memory Usage
Virtual Memory Size
Handle Count

Other stuff you want, but those 3 will give you a much better idea of what the hell is going on with your machine. Peak Memory Usage is just that: a reading of the absolute peak RAM usage that any application has had since it was executed. Virtual Memory Size can be useful to spot memory leaks in software that's just shit and wasn't coded worth a damn. Handle Count also comes in handy for spotting applications that request entirely too much RAM and then start growing exponentially everytime you literally click on it - Yahoo Instant Messenger is famous for that.

Here's what my machine looks like as of right now:

and

The slight bump on the line in the bottom shot is where I fired up Paint Shop Pro to save the first image and then closed it to take the second.

I've got 1GB of physical RAM and a 2048MB (2GB) pagefile on a second hard drive (separate controller), and I can do pretty much anything I want on this machine and never have issues. Some tweaks were done, of course, and it's XP x64 also so that helps in some respects also - XP x64 is based on 2K3 itself, and not the XP x86 codebase.

Admittedly I don't have much going on at the moment, but it fluctuates just as anyone's machine would. One tip: "RAM booster" or "RAM recovery" applications don't work, and are generally a bad bad idea to have on your machine, so don't waste the drivespace messing around with them. They'll only cause you more problems in the long run.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the number of handles you have, hence me recommending you add that to the Processes tab in Task Manager. Something you have running is way way outta whack there, and as I explained above, you're not able to tell precisely what app it is because you're not listing the handle count for applications. Add that column and find out which of the 34 processes you have running (at any given time) has simply gone fuckin' haywire and is causing that handle count to skyrocket like that.

10K handles is normal for most machines with a few apps running. I can cold boot this machine and end up at the Desktop with 22 processes and 290MB of PF Usage (about 200MB actual physical RAM usage) and I'll have about 6.8K handles. After loading up YIM, Avant, mIRC, Explorer, and a few other apps it'll settle to about 9500-10K handles and stay there or close to it just as that second pic above shows: 10974 handles, and this machine has been up for 4 days and 15 hours roughly.

That's your clue on that machine of yours: something is really screwed up with the handle count. I can't tell you which app it is or will turn out to be, but I'll bet one single application after a period of time will just start consuming more and more handles due to bad coding practices, and that's where you're getting the hit.

If you're running BitTorrent applications, each connection is a process of sorts, and the more connections you have (2K3 doesn't have the half-open connection issues that XP does, neither does my XP x64 version), so an old NIC driver trying to keep so many half-open connections requires significant process resources although it won't actually show. Doesn't make sense does it, considering Task Manager should show such activity?

I'm sure you've experienced those times when the entire computer slows... to... a... crawl... and... it... doesn't... respond... to... anything.... you... do... when... you... do... it... but... several... seconds... later.

And during all that slowdown, Task Manager never shows a damned thing out of the ordinary: RAM usage stays the same, processor usage stays the same, all of it appears perfectly normal. Except for the fact that it's taking 39 seconds for a program to close, or 55 seconds for the Start Menu to appear when both should happen nearly instantly.

Why?

Because of crappy NIC drivers - NIC drivers communicate with the system pretty deep on the programming level and if you have a crappy one (almost all of them are crappy, unfortunately) and you have a lot of activity going on with P2P or BitTorrent or some other filesharing application, well... now you know where the slowdowns are coming from. Only solution is to decrease the number of connections used for the P2P/BitTorrent application and hope it resolves some of your system lag.

Here's a tool you can use to check for latency in your machine also. Found it months ago and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT for checking system lag and overall system responsiveness - obviously the lower the latency the better. It was created by a German computer magazine that's been around for a long long time and it works great:

http://members.cox.net/br0adband/dpclat.exe

As always, I hope this helps...

ps
djnes:
XP is as far removed from 2K3 as 2K is from XP in many respects. 2K3 is not XP, period. It's faster in almost every way across the board, and while a lot of us have been using 2K3 as a "workstation" OS for years now, it's not XP and so some issues typically arise from doing so. But to simply say "make it more XP-like" is ridiculous. 2K3 runs circles around XP in terms of performance, even in gaming.

 

[keen]

1: Way too expensive, the gaming version is like $500 right?
2: From what I've seen and heard about Vista, I think I'm going to be one of the few who stay back and use XP or another OS.

Basically, I was recommended 2003 by one of my friends who works for a computer repair shop and has all these demo boxes to run various different OSes. It's worked for me fine currently, with the exception of this memory issue really. I haven't had a single bluescreen either.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

There's no "gaming" version of Vista, there's simply Vista Ultimate which clocks in at $399 retail but obviously you can always find it for significantly less. There's nothing absolutely compelling about Vista, not even DX10 for the majority of people, so if you've got 2K3 and you paid for it (I won't ask at this point) then you've got a solid OS that'll last you a long time, just needs some tweaking and program tuning as I described in my post.

Go find the stuff that's causing that ridiculous handle count to be so high.

 

[keen]

Wow, you were right. I wasn't quite expecting mIRC to do it though.... I don't do any kind of filesharing in mIRC either, and I rarely run uTorrent. I don't use filesharing apps (my sister does though, but that's on her own computer). I generally keep a pretty clean system and use it as a workstation and a gaming platform.

and the latency diagram, which I'm not sure what it says outside of a generally low response time of 1ms? or so..

I might have crappy drivers, not sure... I used the nForce4 drivers off nVidia's site for both my mobo and graphics card, so I would assume it would be good drivers running my hardware but I'm not entirely sure.

 

[djnes]

1: Way too expensive, the gaming version is like $500 right?
2: From what I've seen and heard about Vista, I think I'm going to be one of the few who stay back and use XP or another OS.

That's when you do your own research, and come to your own conclusions. The majority of people who are using Vista love it, and have no issues with it.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

I've never seen mIRC use that sort of handle amount, so... perhaps upgrading it to the latest version might be in order. If it's already at the latest version, you might consider a downgrade to the next latest, or a simple reinstall of mIRC. Obviously it shouldn't be using that much in terms of handles. My copy of mIRC (using ircN v8 as the script) has been running the whole 4 days and 16 hours now and is using 195 handles.

There's a chance you have some add-on to mIRC or a script that's calling up some .dll files (like the moo .dll that people use for system stats, or some WinAMP song tie-in module). I'd say check all that and if necessary reinstall mIRC (make a backup of your current installation just in case, however).

I can't see all the processes you actually have running because it's cut off, but suffice to say that mIRC handle count is astronomical and should definitely be considered as the primary culprit for some if not most of the issues you're having.

The latency looks ok; I was expecting it to be worse but it seems to be fine. Mine rarely goes over 500us even when I'm doing some serious stuff.

 

[keen]

The main issue is ram, but I have been experiencing slowdowns, which I assumed was due to lack of ram, however with this new info I've killed two birds with one stone. I'm going to reinstall mIRC and eventually probably move to XP x64 since from what you're saying it'd be a good low-cost step up.

Interestingly enough, I hard rebooted too, since I was running for 3 weeks straight. Now I have around 720mb free (which is WAY more tolerable for 1gb of ram) and just over 7k handles.

Right after rebooting:

Taken while ingame no slowdowns or excessive loading times at all...

After exiting, memory shot back up to that instead of sticking at 300-400mb

This all has been helpful, thanks. I'm also curious why my latency would be that high, perhaps the drivers/NIC itself?