System Locks - aka another memory issue.

unplugged · Apr 12, 2009

System is 1 month old.
Gateway FX6800 6Gb Ram, i7 CPU

System locks up every 3 days +/- or so.
System is now approx. 2 hours since reboot. TM reports.

Physical: 6134
Cached: 4299
Free: 34

Physical Memory Usage show 2.1Gb/35%

Over the course of the 3 days the amount of Physical Memory Used will grow to 5.5Gb+ at which time the system slows down to a crawl and the system needs to be rebooted.

There are 3 users with accounts on the system and all stay logged in 100% of the time. Switching between users as necessary. Early warning of the system needing to be rebooted is the system taking 10+ minutes to switch between users.

If I add up the reported (in TM) Working Set of RAM for all of the running applications it adds up to only a fraction of the amount of physical memory reported as being used.

I at first thought the problem was related to Norton 360. But after uninstalling/reinstalling it several times and eventually leaving it uninstalled the problem is still there.

Any thoughts or steps I should take to help diagnose?

Thanks

Bare Foot Kid · Apr 12, 2009

Hello unplugged, welcome to Vista Forums!

How many GB of RAM is the mobo rated at?

Later :shock:

Ted

H2SO4 · Apr 12, 2009

Sounds like a straight memory leak. Perfmon is an excellent tool for that sort of troubleshooting (run PERFMON). Since it takes several days for the problem to manifest itself in actual symptoms, you'd want to start a perfmon log so that the relevant counters can be examined afterwards. The objects to log:

- MEMORY
- PROCESS
- PROCESSOR
- SYSTEM

If you configure the log to capture all instances of all counters under those 4 objects say every 15min, the log will provide useful data by the time the box starts underperforming.

The first thing to check would be "Memory\Committed Bytes", "Memory\Pool Paged bytes" and "Memory\Pool Non-paged bytes". If the first of those is showing a gradual increase, it should be attributable to one of the "Process\Private bytes" instances (one of the processes is leaking). If it's the pool counters which are showing appreciable growth, that's a bit more complex so let's cross that bridge when we come to it

unplugged · Apr 13, 2009

MoBo is rated up to 12Gb as per Gateway's web site.
Current populated with

"6144MB 1066MHz DDR3 Three Channel Memory"

comprised of 3 x 2Gb

I started to play with perfmon. I will try to set up the logging you suggest and then repost after I have some data.

Thanks

Bare Foot Kid · Apr 13, 2009

Hello again.

Yes, please keep us informed!

Later

Ted

unplugged · Apr 15, 2009

I ran perfmon and logged the requested data for two 12 hour periods. The "problem" happens quicker than I thought.

Last night between midnight and 8AM with nobody using the computer the Physical RAM number used went from 42% to 64%.

By the end of today I will need to reboot again.

So I have the logs but don't know exactly what I should be looking for. Committed Memory appeared to rise over time. But how do I trace that back to what is causing it. I also noticed this morning and this may be normal but in TM there is a counter for "Handles" This number was at approx. 1,250,000 and just steadily climbing.

Bare Foot Kid · Apr 15, 2009

Hello again.

I'm not too sure about memory leaks; maybe if I bump this for you someone that knows more than me will see it and have some ideas for you.

Later :shock:

Ted

unplugged · Apr 15, 2009

BFK, Thanks but I think I solved it or at least now how to control it.
I was able to track the 1,800,000 file handles back to a program called "SmartCopy"

Which was opening file handle after file handle.

Killing the process freed up several gigs of ram and stopped the incremental rise.

I don't know why this program is doing this but I took it out of startup so I should have the issue again unless I want to run that program for some reason.

Thanks for your help.

Everlong · Apr 15, 2009

Let us know if that fixes the problem for you

Bare Foot Kid · Apr 15, 2009

unplugged said:
BFK, Thanks but I think I solved it or at least now how to control it.
I was able to track the 1,800,000 file handles back to a program called "SmartCopy"

Which was opening file handle after file handle.

Killing the process freed up several gigs of ram and stopped the incremental rise.

I don't know why this program is doing this but I took it out of startup so I should have the issue again unless I want to run that program for some reason.

Thanks for your help.

Yes, keep us informed

Later

Ted

H2SO4 · Apr 15, 2009

Nice work. Anything over 10,000 handles is generally considered a sure sign of a problem. 1,800,000 is just an insane handle leak in the app. You can be sure a 32-bit box would have died long before it got to a tenth of that number

An update for the app may resolve the problem. If not, and you paid for the app, you might want to consider sending the Perfmon log to the app vendor and asking them to analyse the handle leak in their code.

unplugged · Apr 17, 2009

Problem solved as far as I am concerned.
With that program (SmartCopy.exe) no longer running the problem has not reoccurred.

Thank you all for your assistance.

Bare Foot Kid · Apr 17, 2009

Hello, am very pleased you've sorted the issue.

Later

Ted

System Locks - aka another memory issue.

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