XP errors "insufficient memory" in most programs

[PorkCharSui]

A friend is begging for help but I can't find anything on google...

ever see something like this:

"What do you think is causing this "insufficent memory" box to regularly pop up and deny me getting into photoshop, mozilla, outlook, etc?"

He's has 1gb of RAM, and recently had AO(HEL)L installed. I personally think he's in for another clean reinstall even though I did one for him in December.

Thanks

 

[Aztlan]

I will try to install Spybot and adaware and update the anti-virus and registry cleaner like Regsupreme

and boot in safe mode and run those programs to see if there is a program that is suppose to be not running

 

[djnes]

You didn't get nearly enough information from him. What's his memory usage being reported as in the task manager? Did he disable the page file? How is his page file configured?

 

[Phoenix86]

Open task manager/process tab, add VM size under view-select columns. Sort the processes by VM size.

There should be one process that's "gone nuts" on memory usage. That program has a memory leak, or perhaps it's spyware.

 

[PorkCharSui]

Just dropped him an email with your ideas so stay tuned, I should get some more information soon. Thanks!

 

[Phoenix86]

Just dropped him an email with your ideas so stay tuned, I should get some more information soon. Thanks!

If he wants better help, have him register an account so we can talk directly. It'll help us a lot.

 

[PorkCharSui]

Memory usage= total 1571836 available 287500 (average) systme cache 497500 (average) Keeps jumping

PF= 1.10 GB

In processses....."VersionCue62 seems to be hogging most at 69,844K, then "svhost" at 24,000K, then " mysqld-nt.exe" at 18,400K, explorer.exe is at 33,164K, then CCAPP.exe at 26,272K... at the moment I only have Firefox running it's showing 28,416K. 50 some others ranging from 10,0000K and below. Lots at 2, 4, 5 K.​

Is it just me or does it look like the system has a major memory leak some where? 287500/1571836 left with the largest program being versioncue... i fear the dreaded, screw this and reinstall is coming up! haha

 

[MaXimus]

incrase your virtual memory

 

[mikeblas]

Sort the processes by VM size.

I think you'll find that working set is a more useful metric. In Task Manager, this is the "memory usage" column. In Task Manager, "VM Size" is not what it says it is -- it's not the VM size of the process. It's really the private bytes in the process. That number isn't so interesting; at least, not for these problems.

Is it just me or does it look like the system has a major memory leak some where?

I don't see any evidence of a memory leak so far.

As usual, it would help to have an exact copy of the error message. Next time it comes up, have him press CTRL+INS. That'll copy the text of the message box to the clipboard, so it can be pasted into a message.

Were the numbers you quoted for physical memory? You didn't tell us about his page file.

He's got 1.5 gigs of memory, 0.5 gigs of which is being used by the system cache. That's 0.5 gigs that's the system will happily and quickly give up whenever some app needs it, before having the app (or another app) swap.

Were these the numbers at the instant the system was displaying an out of memory error?

287500/1571836 left with the largest program being versioncue... i fear the dreaded, screw this and reinstall is coming up! haha

It seems like you're pretty eager to have him reinstall, so I guess you'll go ahead with that.

The next time you try to help one of your friends, remember that part of the system cache does count towards the used memory on your system. Windows is very good about backing off on it; you should see the memory allocated to system cache drop faster than the need to start swapping would happen.

It's easy to reconfigure VersionCue to use less memory. He's also running MySQL; why is that? From Dreamweaver 8, or some other app?