Out of Memory?

[JohnB]

I'm running Vista 64 bit SP2 with 6 gigs of RAM. (3 x 2 Gig sticks)

 

For some reason I've suddenly started running low on memory.

 

IE runs slow with more than 12 tabs open and Paint Shop Pro can't resize a picture.

 

Every scanner I've got says that I have roughly 4.5 gigs free.

 

First thought was that something was hiding, but if it is, it's good. AVG, Ad Aware, Malwarebytes, CC Cleaner and Super Anti Spyware can't find it. Process monitor says that the memory is free, nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

 

All memory tests show no problems with the sticks themselves.

 

The only program that auto updates is AVG 9. I'm wondering if the Resident Shield is somehow locking off part of the memory.

 

Any thoughts? This one has me stuffed.

[Pangloss]

Could be some of the memory is bad. I've seen that happen before, even in Windows 7, where the memory shows up in the pool but when it gets used Bad Things start to happen. Running some memory tests would be good, as well as swapping out memory to different locations, trying to run the computer on one stick at a time, etc.

 

One thing that sounds a bit odd about your config is that you report having three sticks of memory. Is it tri-channel? Because if it's dual-channel you have to do those in pairs, but I'm not really sure about tri-channel.

 

If it's an older computer (and single channel memory) then you may also want to check and make sure your mobo is okay with that memory config. It may need a firmware update.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Are there any symptoms of low memory besides things running slowly? For example, I think Task Manager will show you the page file size, and if that's gotten really big things are being swapped to disk.

 

If there aren't any symptoms besides "it gets slow," maybe there's something else going on.

[michel123456]

Try removing AVG for a while.

Some software is running in the background. Antivirus programs are heavy and the third presumable guilty (after viruses & malware).

If nothing improves, check the running processes in "Task Manager", and end one by one (you may crash if you end some iexplore.exe or rundll32.exe for example, but no other harm than a reboot).

Good luck.

[JohnB]

Firstly I was too quick. It's 2 x 1 gig sticks and 2 x 2 gig sticks.

 

Secondly.:doh::doh:

 

Rather than resizing the needed jpg to 400 x 500 pixels @ 100 pixel per inch I was trying to resize to 400 x 500 inches @ 100 pixels per inch. I think I know why I ran out of memory.

 

:doh::doh:

 

On the up side, I've run so many scans that I'm absolutely certain that the RAM is in great shape.

 

Cap'n Refsmmat, the system is set up to be as quick as it can be. All delays have been set to zero. I'm used to tabs opening and closing instantly. For some reason over the last couple of weeks opening and closing tabs now takes time.

 

While fine at the start, as a browsing session gets longer the speed of tab openings and closings slowly increases. After a while it can take tabs 5-10 seconds to close down. A reboot solves the problem but it leads me to think that something somewhere is not releasing RAM when it shuts down.

 

Page file is only 6.4 Gigs, so there's still plenty of room.

 

Cheers guys and thanks for the suggestions.

[Nex6]

update your BIOS, and if your bios has it do a memtest. otherise, you can create a dos boot disk from bootdisk.com and do one.

 

if, the BIOS, and Memory are fine, and still not showing correctly. make, get a Linux or winPE disk, and boot into a CD/DVD rom. and, check the ram there. if it

comes back fine, the something else is going on in your windows install. if thats the case, update all drivers. remove, all AV, etc. and see how it behaves.

 

-Nex6