Low VR mem warnings on shutdown w/WinXP

[akoum 0]

Everytime I go to shutdown I get the following: "Not enough virtual memory. Windows is increasing the pagefile size."

I do not know what is causing this at all. I set the pagefile to 768mb and let windows manage it but no luck at all. Any ideas would be helpfull.

[Davros 0]

Do you have enough free drivespace on the partition where the swapfile resides? Have you defragged lately?

[akoum 0]

I have 32gigs free space on the disk and I have defragged using Norton Speed Disk 2002 and Diskeeper 7.0 with no luck. There really is no reason for me to be getting this message on shutdown.

[Sampson 0]

A person does have to stand in awe, after a while, at the seemingly infinite number of errors these systems are capable of - especially those that fit the category of "There really is no reason." I know your anguish; it is my most oft repeated phrase.

 

What is peculiar to your "error" is that it only comes at shutdown. One would think that it should come up during a session of multiple programs being opened where memory is constrained more stringently.

 

Since you have plenty of hard disk space and your defraggers would have cleared the way for a contiguous (semi-contiguous?)pagefile, it may not be that your settings have anything to do with the problem (famous last words).

 

First, I will say that 256mb of Ram is adequate, but you should consider increasing this.

 

Are you running large databases with multiple indexes? How many programs do you run at the same time? I am asking this just to see how you are using the machine and if there is some program that is not releasing its memory to the pool for re-use.

 

In Windows Explorer do a find on *.tmp . How many of these do you find? Under c:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Local Settings\Temp there should be at least one file that might say ~DF****.tmp where * stands for a number. Do you have more that one of these? If so, how many more?

 

In your registry go to the following key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and look to see what the value is for ClearPageFileAtShutdown. Most of the time its REG_DWORD is set to 0. Setting it to 1 will force the machine to clear the pagefile at shutdown. (Remember all the provisos about playing around in the Registry - back it up - and don't play with it at all if you don't feel comfortable)

 

Finally, look in your device manager and see if there are any conflicts. Believe it or not I had the floppy fighting with a network driver that messed up one of my machines.

 

Lets leave it at that to see what you find out.

[akoum 0]

Sampson thanks for all the tips I can check out. First I must say that I am pretty sure that it is a Critical Windows Update that is causing this as it starts happening when I update windows. But my brother runs WinXP home on a P4/256mb with all the same updates and has no issues like this at all. Also I started to get this with my old P3 before upgrading as I was told it was happening only on certain configs. Also I do run some mem hungry apps like Photoshop/Premiere and lots of games. But I have noticed that once I quit a huge app like that, winXP has more available memory for use. Even more than restarting.After a restart I have 130mb free mem available to windows but when I quit photoshop or a game I have 195mb free.

I have also used the clear pagefile on shutdown that you recommended but all it does is give me a long shutdown. I also did a search for *.tmp files and got 3 results(SET3.tmp, SET7.tmp, CONFIG.tmp)

Also I only run 2 or 3 apps at the same time tops, but it is somewhat rare. I thank you for your time sampson.

[billyliv 0]

Hi akoum,

This is the result of a recent Norton Internet Security update. Norton are working on the fix. In the meantime , before you shutdown, right click on the Norton Internet Security icon in your taskbar and disable Auto Protect. I only had to do this once, the low V.R. message hasn't come back. Cheers Bill