Weird Memory Usage in Windows

Not sure if this is truly the right section, but it's memory related, so I'll give it a shot.

I do a lot of statistical work and was trying to get Stata (a stats package) to use a ton of RAM. Well, it's only a 32-bit version of Stata, so it can only see 4GB, but for some reason I can only have it use up to 1522MB - I get an error saying that the OS won't give up any more than that. So I got a little curious and tried to see how much total RAM I could get the system to be using at one time.

To do this, I opened a ton of emails at once and then used photoshop to open a ton of pictures at once. Using Windows 7's new resource monitor to monitor memory usage, I see that it gets up to about 4.5-4.6GB of memory and then all of the sudden Photoshop won't open any more photos saying "the system is out of memory." Now, the resource monitor in Windows 7 is cool because it breaks down usage into programs, hardware reserved, standby (cached code), and free. It shows 6140MB available to programs and, at max, around 4600MB used by programs, 1100MB used in "standby", and about 450MB Free. Yet, I'm getting out of memory errors AND at that point I start getting addressing errors, programs begin halting and crashing, Aero turns off, etc. This is really, really weird behavior. My first thought was that one of the sticks of RAM is bad so I ran the latest version of Memtest+ and that checked out totally fine AND saw all 6GB. THis is concerning to me because I want to be able to use ALL of my RAM if needed. My old system had only 2GB, so you can imagine that gaming under Vista often used 99% of the available RAM, but this never caused games to slow down (other than while paging) or stability issues, so this experience is frustrating and foreign.

I've been trying to find information using Google searches and haven't been able to find anything at all. Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? I think that I should be able to use 100% of the installed physical memory and not suffer any stability issues. Please note that this overclock is completely stable in pretty much anything I've ever done - it will prime for days straight without crashing. The only times I've gotten these kinds of stability issues were during my attempt to use as much RAM as possible.

Any ideas?

Strages said:

This is really, really weird behavior.

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No offense, but Windows 7 *is* in Beta right now. Since your know you system is stable, you should report it to Microsoft.

I know that really isn't an answer, but it is hard to diagnose production machines using beta software.

EDIT: Fine, you convinced me to make a guess. The only thing I can think of is that because the program is 32bit, it can't address outside of the 4gb barrier and thinks it is limited to 1522mb. Why other programs work? I haven't the slightest idea.

I think what I was getting at was a little unclear. I'm not so concerned about the Stats program - that's a separate issue altogether that I can contact tech support about.

You're right that Windows 7 is in beta, but the current beta is actually very stable and very good in most other ways. I mean, I'm more looking at other possibilities - that's how you diagnose the problem as Windows 7 instead of something else. I'm trying to figure out if it's something else.

I suppose I could dual-boot my copy of Vista x64 and see if I can reproduce the problem on that.

Strages said:

I suppose I could dual-boot my copy of Vista x64 and see if I can reproduce the problem on that.

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Sorry that my thoughts were a little fuzzy, I'm currently working (yay tech support). That is basically what I meant to imply.

Have you tried with your computer at stock just in case? I think it is the OS though, for me I haven't used more than 4Gb at once yet, but might be fixed with the next major RC for windows 7 next month.

Wow! I am hilarious sometimes.

Somehow, I was running without a paging file, which I bet explains A LOT of these weird memory issues. I'm going to have to turn it on and let you guys know what happens.

I have NO idea how I'm not running with a paging file, I must have turned it off for some reason and forgotten to turn it back on.

Yeah, so not having a paging file setup is bad. Problem solved!