Any Windoze experts on here ? Bit OT ...

Rebuild. Take image. Next time it screws up, restore image & data from backup.

This is where professional Windows computer support is heading. Nobody diagnoses actual problems anymore.

For somewhere down the line, one of the manufacturers of the software will find his memory leak - that will be after you upgrade to Windows 8.

Or, Linux Mint....

;-)

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Adrian C

Do you notice any slowdown when this occurs?

I have a similar "problem" under W2K. Windows creates a virtual memory swap file when started, and expands it as needed. Unfortunately, the expanding swap file causes the machine to slow down, and a restart is eventually required. (This can take a few days to a week or more, depending on how "hard" you push the OS. I tend to have a lot of apps and files open at once, so I have to restart as often as every four or five days.)

It's also possible some freaky malware is running. You need a utility that shows everything running on the machine, such as Process Explorer.

Go into the task manager and view the amount of memory each process is using. You've probably got one that has a memory leak which isn't uncommon. Malwarebytes had a huge problem with that until they corrected it.

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

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Are you sure you aren't just being upset by a "meaningless number"? I.e., does PERFORMANCE degrade as the number increases? Have you

*analytically* observed its performance as the number reaches "100%"?

I don't run W7 (insert large grin, here). So, don't know *exactly* what the metric reflects. But, often operating systems appear to be "using" memory that they really aren't -- just haven't gotten around to reclaiming, yet (i.e., there is a cost with reclaiming "previously used" memory... why bear that cost if the system doesn't

*need* that memory -- yet!?)

You *could* have a memory leak in the OS or any of the applications/services that are running. But, there is no real way to *prove* that since the metric you are observing might not be reflecting actual "memory actively in use" (if it was, you could kill processes and watch those that remain to chart how the metric changes over time).

To do so, image the disk "as is". Then, clobber services and applications and *measure* the performance "in some reproducible setting". You can later restore the original image and apply any lessons learned *to* that.

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Ah, this suggests that you *are* seeing actual performance degradation.

Build the largest "swap/paging/VM/whatever MS's term-du-jour is" for the system and defragment that "file". I.e., give it whatever it will ultimately need so it doesn't have to *grow* the swap during use.

The answer, of course, is to dump Windows... :> (why not go back to XP if that worked well for you?)

HTH,

--don

Doing a Vista home OS repair at the shop, after I fixed a hw problem with the CPU overheating, I noticed what sounds like the same thing. Hard drive also goes nuts fter a while too. After turning off some stuff in task manager one by one, the culpret seemed to be the WLAN auto finder process, or something like that. I remember the hard drive seeking all the time maybe was fixed by turning off the indexing service.

Another good resource to post the problem or research for similar , are the BBS forums at

What are you using to see the amount of memory in use, like 35% then eventually 90%?

I agree with the guy who said go into Task Mgr / Processes and see which tasks are using the memory.

Another couple ideas to narrow it down, if you think you know what the culprit is, to test the theory:

- Go into MSCONFIG and under the Services & Startup tabs, disable all non-essential non-MS startups and services, then see if PC can idle for a few days without gobbling up all mem.

- Along the same lines, try booting into Safe Mode and see if it can idle a few days without gobbling up the mem.

Or if you don't know what the culprit is perhaps you can use those techniques to determine by process of elimination.

Perhaps some program or even OS component has a debug trace or log turned on which is stored in mem and the longer you run the more it consumes.

Yes, it does slow down. I have the Windoze memory usage widget running, and you can see the usage creeping up over a couple of days or so, to the point where it reaches 90+ %, at which point, the machine is crawling, and having difficulty having multiple programs open at once. It then needs a restart, although occasionally, if I let it get too bad, there's not even enough room to run the shutdown utility, and I then have to do a crash and burn BRS restart ... Just as a matter of interest, the memory monitor that is part of the cleaner program, agrees exactly with the Windoze widget.

As to W2K, I ran the pro version on my previous machine, prior to ending up with XP Pro, and I have to say that I never seemed to have the problem with either of those two versions.

Arfa

Some good steers there, and also from others who have replied. Thanks all for your input. I am using two things to monitor the memory usage. The first is the built-in Windoze memory and processor usage graphic desktop widget. The second is the memory usage monitoring tool in the memory cleaner program that I have been using. It agrees exactly with the Windoze one, which would suggest that they are right. As you see the memory clogging up over a couple of days, the system performance degrades very noticeably, to the point where it becomes unusable for all practical purposes. If you then run the cleaner, it will recover perhaps 20% at best, and there is a corresponding improvement in performance, which again, would suggest to me that what the widget is reporting as being the case, actually *is* the case. Ultimately, the only way to get the system back to full normal performance, is to either soft or hard restart, after which, low memory usage is again reported.

When I get time, I'll do a restart, and then note what all of the background applications and the system, are using. When it has started to clog noticeably, I'll recheck, and see what is using it all ...

Arfa

Open the Task Manager and see what process(s) are eating up your ram and CPU. Report back.

--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

Arfa, here is a little free (donate if you wish) program that will show you all the stuff that runs upon system start. It may find more than what msconfig indicates. It is always surprising how much stuff wants to suck up your RAM without your explicit permission.

Charlie

Me too, I've run W2k Pro here on this machine for a long time now, I do not have issues with it. It may not have all of the goodies the latest has how ever, it works!

Jamie

Thanks Charlie. I'll give it a look

Arfa

Download Autoruns and Process Explorer. Scroll down the page on the right.

Those are just two tools in the arsenal I use when I'm out on a trouble call. They are very useful at tracking down your sort of problem.

You have to be careful of some of these other suggestions. I don't trust many of them, only what M$ Technet approves. Learned my lesson a long time ago in the 90's.

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Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

e d w n

ts

Like Meat Plow, I also find great value in the sysinternals tools. Autoruns and Process Explorer are definitely in order if you can't find your memory hog using the built-in utilities.

Autoruns is like a turbocharged MSCONFIG and Process Explorer is like a turbocharged Task Manager.

It would also be a good idea to take a look in the event viewer and see if there are a gazillion events from something going haywire, most likely in the System or Application logs.

Not to start pointing fingers prematurely, but reviewing your original post reminded me that I've seen some pretty "unexpected results" come from both Google Desktop and Weatherbug, even though they behave fine for some people.

I'm curious to see what Task Mgr says.

2GB is about the minimum I would use for Windoze 7 64 bit. If the machine and your budget can handle it, try installing 4GB total. Also, with twice as much RAM, it will take twice as long before it crashes.

Be specific. Some mutations of Thunderbird had memory leak problem.

If your weather monitor is Weatherbug, I vaguely recall additional memory leak problems. What program are you using for anti-virus/spyware? Microsoft Security Essentials had a really minor memory leak that was allegedly fixed in the latest 2.0.xxx release.

Classic memory leak. Some application is probably the culprit. Monitor the memory usage and kill off running programs until you identify the source of the memory leak. Going from 35% of 2GB to 75% is a change of 40% of 2GB or 800MBytes change. Over a 3 day period, that 11MBytes per hour or 183KBytes/minute. That's not a memory leak. That's a program gone insane that should be exterminated from your machine. You should be able to see that much memory loss visually, using Task Manager, one of the numerous Windoze Widgets, or some program that shows available memory.

Memory defragmenters and cleaners don't do anything useful. Cleaning the heap and other junk left in RAM doesn't stay around long enough for any program to even detect misused RAM, much less doing anything to expedite their removal.

Sigh. I once tried a RAM defrag program and was amazed at how much available memory it was able to free. I eventually figured out what it was doing. When it started, it would allocate a huge block of RAM for scratch space. When it was done, it would magically free this memory, claiming that it was salvage from program garbage collections. Yep, it did, but the program the created the garbage was the RAM defrag program.

I help maintain a fairly reliable Windoze 7 machine that's up and playing SNMP network monitor:

C:\> systeminfo | find "System Up Time" System Up Time: 13 Days, 4 Hours, 58 Minutes, 27 Seconds (...) Total Physical Memory: 1,980 MB Available Physical Memory: 1,030 MB Virtual Memory: Max Size: 2,048 MB Virtual Memory: Available: 1,996 MB Virtual Memory: In Use: 52 MB Page File Location(s): C:\pagefile.sys

No sign of any memory leaks. It normally stays up longer, but everyone has been playing with updates and revisions, so the uptime tends to be more than about 2 weeks.

It's probably NOT Windoze 7. It's probably some application that you're running. Download and install Belarc Advisor (free version) and produce (don't post) a system report. Look down the list of installed applications for a likely culprit for producing a memory leak.

No problems, but if you want reliability, I suggest Ubuntu or one of the other Linux distributions. If you're running a fairly basic set of applications (Web, email, word processor, spreadsheet, etc), then Linux will be a suitable replacement. If you run a bizarre mix of eclectic utilities and apps, stay with Windoze 7. OS/X on a Mac is also a good substitute, but will cost about twice as much as the equivalent PC. Retraining your son on a new operating system might also be useful, as it will keep him occupied and out of your workspace for a few weeks.

Well, if you want a one-line answer, you could at least have warned me or supplied a one-line question. Grumble.

I do this kind of stuff every day. I only see broken computers. I'm sure there are users out there that have perfectly working machines, but I never see them. That's the curse of being in the repair/support biz. Also, if Microsoft ever produced a reliable product, I would be out of business. The company motto is "If this stuff worked, you wouldn't need me". It's on my biz card and all my stationary. Nobody has ever disagreed (or cared).

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

That's the catch, of course. Operating systems other than Windows or Macintosh don't have fancy software written for them.

Perhaps, but I run W2K, Word, and other Windows software without problems. I do agree, however, that Windows sometimes behaves Most Strangely, for no obvious reason.

Lots of good stuff there Jeff. Thanks for your time and effort. Appreciated. Anti-virus is Avast by the way. I have never had any problems with that, but who knows ? T-Bird version is 3.1.7. Yes, machine does have an eclectic mix of applications on it, so not really a suitable candidate for a beard and sandals 'makeover' .... Weather prog is "The Weather Channel desktop weather". I have been running it for years, without any problems on previous machines / Win OS's. Clock synchroniser is Dimension 4, again used for many years, without issue. Just as a matter of interest, one of my main suspects as a culprit is what I am using now as a news client, which is Windows Live Mail. I used to use OE for all email and news on previous versions of OS, but since having this Windoze 7, I am using T-Bird as a mail client only, as it is useless at news (for me anyway) and Live Mail for news only, as I don't like the way it handles email. I liked OE. It was simple, worked, and did everything I wanted it to, and I rue the day that I lost that one-stop solution.

Arfa

I have never had any real problems with Windows. I'm a fairly heavy user compared to Joe Average, and have, over the years, had many varied and exotic applications running on Windows machines with OS's from Win 3.1 right up to Win 7. I know that it's not a very fashionable or approved position to declare, but I actually quite like the Windows concept on the whole, and would never indulge in Gates-bashing. I actually think that Windows has, over the years, done more to expand the world of personal computing, and to 'standardise' application writing, than any other OS or platform.

Arfa

Mac and Linux certainly do have fancy software, just fewer choices, and generally not as well supported by the authors or manufacturers. I've lost count of how many times a Mac support request degenerated into "you don't need to know" or "it should be intuitive". Similarly for Linux, I've received "just modify the source code yourself if you don't like it" from various authors. Unfortunately, Windoze is no better with the traditional "just reinstall the entire operating system" and it should fix the problem.

From my warped perspective, all the various platforms are 90% the same. However, the 10% that's different will drive you nuts. Some are better in specific areas, but overall, they all have (different) problems.

Moral: You can't win.

Windoze is strange, but my customers are even stranger. If you can't find a reason, a conspiracy will usually suffice as a suitable substitute.

Allow me to suggest an easy upgrade to XP, which will probably run on whatever ancient hardware you're using. WinFLP.

I have it running on a Celeron 400MHz with 384 MBytes of RAM and a 4GB CFL SSD drive. It's kinda slow, but does function. There are some update issues as some of the most recent updates will not install. Same with some current MS add-ons. For example, MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) will not install. It can also be installed without Internet Exploder. It may not take you from the stone age to the space age, but maybe half way to approximately the Renaissance.

I recently tried to use the above Celeron 400 for an ADS-B monitor. WinFLP would run just fine, but the various ADS-B monitoring application (SBS-1 Basestation) is a gigantic bloated monster, which beat the virtual memory to death. I had to get a bigger machine, and run the real XP version, to get it to play. Careful what you install.

For every improvement in hardware performance, there is an equal and opposite decrease in speed provided by the software. In 1981, it took me about 2-3 minutes to boot my 5150 IBM PC from the floppy disk. Roll forward 30 years, and it still takes about the same time on my Dore2Duo machine. This is not progress.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558