Memory management issues - W8.1

[danabnormal]

Hi all hope you can help!

I have a new custom build PC and I keep running in to memory issues - spec is below.




Essentially games, XBMC etc crash out with a message saying that memory is low and that [current game] must be closed.

After this started I updated all drivers etc but I'm still getting the same problem. Heres a summary of the data Event Viewer pulled together in System Event ID 2004 (Events related to exhaustion of system commit limit (virtual memory).):



And that all looks very weird. Basically virtual memory is filling up before physical memory is exhausted. Hmm.

So then I set up a performance monitor for memory, ran through the game again, and got the same message. PerfMon then showed this:



Which would imply a memory leak in a process running under svchost. Checking Task Manager shows these items running under that PID:



Anyone have any ideas what may be happening here? It looks like something in svchost is filling up all available memory, however there really is nothing much running at all when this occurs - the machine should be able to cope OK.

I've also run a Windows memory check, and that came back fine.

And if this happens once more while the Mrs is playing LEGO LOTR, there'll be hell to pay....

Thanks!

Dan

 

[redduc900]

What's the current size of the paging file?

 

[danabnormal]

Blimey I put all that and forget that detail? I need more coffee.

I took it off auto when I first got the message and its hard set to 6gb now. I did try 8 with no luck but then read 75% is now deemed optimal. Whether that's true or not I don't know.

 

[pcgamer4life]

Absolutely no application or service should use 4gb of memory. Page file is a short-term solution (maybe) for a problem that exists elsewhere. With 8gb of RAM, you don't even need a page file (assuming the applications you're using don't explicitly use it).

Format and reinstall, IMO. Something is terribly wrong.. my first instinct is virus/malware or a crappily coded third party application.

[edit]
I noticed SuperFetch running under that PID in your screenshot. I'm not familiar with it, but a quick google turns up this result. Perhaps Superfetch is precaching some stuff that it expects you to use or something. In any event, it shouldn't be interfering with running applications..they should always have priority.. so something is wrong in one way or another.

 

[danabnormal]

Absolutely no application or service should use 4gb of memory. Page file is a short-term solution (maybe) for a problem that exists elsewhere. With 8gb of RAM, you don't even need a page file (assuming the applications you're using don't explicitly use it).

Format and reinstall, IMO. Something is terribly wrong.. my first instinct is virus/malware or a crappily coded third party application.

[edit]
I noticed SuperFetch running under that PID in your screenshot. I'm not familiar with it, but a quick google turns up this result. Perhaps Superfetch is precaching some stuff that it expects you to use or something..

Cheers, I feared that may be the case.

The only 'crappy' app I have installed us ds3tool so I can use ps3 controllers on the system, however it doesn't look like that's running through svchost.

I might do the same test with procmon running, see if that can pin point something.

Just can't see why svchost would reserve that much memory when such a small amount is in use.

/edit Cheers for the edit re superfetch, will look in to it.

This is a brand new build as of last week and essentially only os, av, xbmc and steam are running so I might leave the reinstall for a bit as it would probably be easier to diagnose if it's a hardware issue as it currently stands. Any further ideas though are more than welcome!

 

[pcgamer4life]

If you do end up doing a reinstall, it might be a good idea to carve out a partition for Windows only, and install everything else elsewhere. That way in the future you can just blow away your OS partition without having to reinstall all of your programs and games.

Try disabling SuperFetch and just see if that is indeed your problem. My guess is that it is, though I cannot imagine why/what it's attempting to cache.

 

[danabnormal]

If you do end up doing a reinstall, it might be a good idea to carve out a partition for Windows only, and install everything else elsewhere. That way in the future you can just blow away your OS partition without having to reinstall all of your programs and games.

Try disabling SuperFetch and just see if that is indeed your problem. My guess is that it is, though I cannot imagine why/what it's attempting to cache.

That's the plan. I'll be adding a second drive soon for apps and then the ssd will be used purely for the os.

 

[danabnormal]

ARGH!

So. Time for an update.

After the recommendation to check out SuperFetch, I found that Windows 7 "automatically" disables SuperFetch, scheduled defrag etc if an SSD is present. The machine is Windows 8 and I found both were enabled, so disabled them. Unfortunately it has no effect.

I have, however, narrowed it down to one thing. This only happens when an app is running full screen - for example XBMC or any game. When windowed, I do not get this problem (as you can see below).





The above is the result from procmon after running XBMC in full screen mode for a few minutes. Unfortunately procmon hasn't helped to narrow down the exact cause. Note that the flatline at the end is with XBMC still running but in window mode.

I then, for laughs, disabled virtual memory entirely and got exactly the same results.

After I went in to the BIOS, and upped the onboard graphics card memory allocation to maximum. The same still happened, but the GPU utilization looks far better.





Surely the fact this is only happening when in full screen (and when idle too - I launched XBMC before I went to work, came home, and had the same errors in the Event Log from about half hour previous) would indicate a driver issue but all has been updated (including installing the Intel drivers as opposed to the Gigabyte motherboard ones).

I'm not entirely sure a reinstall will do anything as this is a virgin install as of a week ago and there is no fat on the machine. Yet.

Any ideas??

(ps thanks all for your help so far, appreciate it!)

 

[redduc900]

I'd probably start by setting the paging file min. to 8GB and the max. to 24GB, then go from there.

 

[pcgamer4life]

I'd probably start by setting the paging file min. to 8GB and the max. to 24GB, then go from there.

Won't that just put a bandaid over the issue? Something is using far more RAM than it needs to be.. expanding the page file will just use the disk instead of RAM for the overflow of memory needed... doesn't change the fact that something is still wrong and still using way too much RAM.

 

[danabnormal]

I'd probably start by setting the paging file min. to 8GB and the max. to 24GB, then go from there.

Thing is its something allocating, not using, the memory. Then once all memory is reserved, it's then releasing it. Unfortunately that's enough for Windows to complain. And it's something so low level that is hiding in svchost. Very odd.

 

[Arbiter Odie]

I recently fought with something kinda similar, and found RamMap to be useful.
Here's the link, maybe it'll shed some extra light on the source. In my case, it revealed that it was a driver causing the problem-- it was my ramdisk starting without asking, and then not formatting itself.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx