Abnormally Large Page File

CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
edited September 2006 in Science & Tech
Recently I've been getting the error messages that Windows is running out of virtual memory. To my knowledge I have not change anything recently that would have caused this. I started using the latest version of firefox and read that it was quite a resource hog so I switched back to ie thinking that might have been the problem, but to no avail. I am not running too many applications in the background. Usually just an older version of AIM that I've been running for quite a while and never had problems with, along with my antivirus program and a popup blocker, but I will come back to my computer that has been on all day and the page file will be enormous and windows will be low on virtual memory.

Any ideas what might be causing this??

Comments

  • NecropolisNecropolis Hawarden, Wales Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    You are using over 1.6gb of memory. Can you do a screenshot of your processes tab sorted by mem usage. That may help us.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    this probably wont help that much because I just restarted my computer after that first post because it was slowing down so much, it seems restarting is the only solution.

    The strange part is, from that first screenshot I posted , I have quite a bit of physical memory available so why is it creating such an enormous page file before the physical memory is even being used???
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    in the task manager, click "view" and "select columns" - and show us the virtual memory size.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    here's the current screenshot with the VM Size, however like I said I just restarted the computer so the page file is like 300mb right now, doh, I shouldve waited to restart, however once it gets all huge again I'll have to check this out. BTW thats pretty handy, learn something new everyday, I never knew you could add all that different info to the task manager view.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    It might be a memory leak. I noticed you had the yahoo widget engine running. Perhaps you have a crappy widget or something.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    primesuspect wrote:
    It might be a memory leak. I noticed you had the yahoo widget engine running. Perhaps you have a crappy widget or something.

    Actually now that you mention it, I bet that's what it is, I hadn't used Konfabulator for a while and when I launched it the other day it said there was a new version so I updated it and it was now Yahoo Widget Engine, and that's about when it started happening.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    Whats more concerning is the three instances of cli.exe (part of ATI catalyst control center) using nearly 60mb of swap. What the hell is that all about???!?!
  • sfleurietsfleuriet Texas New
    edited January 2006
    Shorty wrote:
    Whats more concerning is the three instances of cli.exe (part of ATI catalyst control center) using nearly 60mb of swap. What the hell is that all about???!?!
    I have three instances of CLI running as well. One is 22mb, one is 21mb, and one is 18mb. And I'm running the newest ATI Catalyst version 6.1.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    uninstalled Yahoo Widget engine but the problem was back today, I think I've identified the culprit however, mixer.exe is using 590mb of virtual memory, now I must investigate what it is, I think its some creative thing that came with my zen nano plus software
  • sfleurietsfleuriet Texas New
    edited January 2006
    Wow.. thats a lot. Here's what found about it:
    mixer.exe is a part of the drivers for the C-Media onboard sound systems. It provides the user with a replacement for the default Windows Volume Mixer.

    Oh also you can lower your mem and VMem usage some by using GAIM instead of AIM.
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited January 2006
    pilotwings119 wrote:
    Wow.. thats a lot. Here's what found about it:



    Oh also you can lower your mem and VMem usage some by using GAIM instead of AIM.

    thanks for the info, I found about the same and just disabled mixer.exe using msconfig. I actually have a soundblaster live but I enabled the onboard sound a couple weeks ago to test something out, guess thats where my problem was!

    thanks for reminding me abou GAIM, a friend of mine had it on her computer that I was using this weekend and I was like whoa whats up with your IM its pretty sweet, no ads! It's been a while since I used GAIM and I think the version I downloaded back when I tried it had a memory leak so I was unimpressed and uninstalled it, I'll have to give it another go.
  • sfleurietsfleuriet Texas New
    edited January 2006
    Yeah try GAIM again, but probably not the new Beta version. I'm using 1.5.0, and thats what most people use - it rocks. I just hate the Beta version - it looks so tacky and has a couple HUGE buttons... I don't remember what they were for, but they were big. I guess try it and see what you think. If you don't like it, download 1.5.0.
  • Dr-JamescookDr-Jamescook
    edited September 2006
    Ok, I know this is an old topic, for you guys anyways, but for me it's something that has bothered me for a while now and I'm seeking answers. This is the only place I found by searching on Google that mentioned a huge pagefile problem. Check this out.

    The first screenshot shows what my actual on-the-disk size of my page file is - 1.5GB. But also, the hiberfil.sys is taking up 1GB of space too. Now the second one is of my task manager and it says there isn't that much being used... what's the deal here? And the third picture shows my Processes, which happens to line up with the Performance tab. Any help here?
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited September 2006
    Dr.Jamescook wrote:
    The first screenshot shows what my actual on-the-disk size of my page file is - 1.5GB.

    Looks like Windows is managing your pagefile size. You have 1 Gig of RAM, and Windows makes the pagefile 1.5 times the size of physical RAM. Unless you are short on hard drive space I'm not sure why it's a problem...though when you combine pagefile with physical RAM.....that's an awful lot of "memory".

    You can change it by right clicking on My Computer> Properties, Advanced tab, then the "Settings" button under "Performance". Then click another "Advanced" tab, then the "Change" button under "virtual memory" at the bottom. Click the "Custom Size" radio button, set things the way you want them (I have a Gig of RAM and have pagefile throttled back to 768), then click the "Set" button and OK out of there. It will make you reboot, then the pagefile.sys will be the size you want. Again, I'm not sure you've gained anything but some disk space.
    Dr.Jamescook wrote:
    But also, the hiberfil.sys is taking up 1GB of space too.

    hiberfil.sys is where Windows "parks" all of the stuff in RAM when you hibernate. It's always about the same size as RAM, for obvious reasons. If you never hibernate your computer, you can just disable hibernation in Control Panel> Power Options and that will get rid of it. Again, unless you're really low on disk space, I'm not sure it's an issue.
  • Dr-JamescookDr-Jamescook
    edited September 2006
    Yeah, when I posted I only had 4.35MB of free space on my C: drive. Since I got rid of hybernation and completely moved the paging file to D: I have 2.5GB of much needed free space.

    Thanks.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited September 2006
    you may want a new bigger hd. defragging doesn't work without 10% free, and I notice that my computer likes to have more than that free, or things just feel slower.
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