Re: Watching Virtual Memory


At the time you obtained the Commit Charge figures your system was
probably making very little use of the pagefile as the utility suggested
by Ken Blake would confirm. However, some of the programmes you are
using could rapidly increase the memory usage to more than your
installed RAM so the system resorting to use of the pagefile becomes
inevitable. An example is a graphics programme used to edit photographs
where the undo feature will hold large amounts of information in memory
until the editing is complete and the file saved. Another aspect is the
potential for memory leaks. In this case the memory is not released when
you close the programme. You need to restart the computer for the memory
to be released. Your comment about the speed Word 2003 loads after
restarting the computer suggests that memory leaks may be impacting on
your system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

Memory leaks can occur with a particular version of a programme or occur
with successive versions so comments on particular programmes have to be
taken bearing that in mind.

SeaMonkey according to reports, uses a lot of memory and is blamed for
memory leaks. Googling on "SeaMonkey memory leak" produces interesting
reading. Do you have Netscape Navigator 8 or 9 (which is or was a beta)?
Investigating how individual extensions work might highlight a problem
area. There is a newer version of Sea Monkey to the one you are using:
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Other Mozilla projects e.g. Firefox are also known to contain memory
leaks.

What version of Paint Shop Pro? Doesn't this have an Undo feature? This
also seems to be blamed by some for memory leaks.

Radio Replay threw up a fixed memory leak. What version of Winamp do you
have? Bug fixed in v5.34

Avoiding unnecessary multi-tasking and leaving windows and programmes
open after use, will help to minimise memory usage. Shutting down at the
end of a computer session will help to minimise the impact of any
existing memory leaks.

To get the top 6 in Task Manager simply click on the Peak Mem column
head once or twice to sort the processes in the order you require. Note
I was asking about peak memory not CPU usage.

From your Disk Defragmenter reports I notice you are using VobBlanker.
This has left a multi fragmented 1 gb file in a temporary folder. Do you
know what purpose this file serves? Does it need to be retained? Will it
automatically be replaced with a like file if deleted the next time to
use VobBlanker. Large fragmented
files are often not easily defragmented by Disk Defragmenter. When left
as they are they can cause newly created files to fragment more rapidly
than they might otherwise do. You could try copying the file to another
partition, deleting the file on C, running Disk Defragmenter on C and
then copying the file back to C. Finally the delete the file on the
other partition. Use the Copy command rather than the Move command.

Earlier you complained that your pagefile was overlarge at 2 gb. You
have obviously reduced it to 384 mb. This could be a mistake and you
should consider reinstating it to at least 1 gb maximum. Many will
recommend you changing to "Let Windows manage". If you reduced the size
to create free disk space there may be other better ways to achieve your
objective. One, there are others, is detailed below.

The default allocation to System Restore is 12% on your C partition
which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700 mb. Right click your My
Computer icon on the Desktop and select System Restore. Place the cursor
on your C drive select Settings but this time find the slider and drag
it to the left until it reads 700 mb and
exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and
exit. This could create a further 7 gb free space.

Disk Defragmenter will be grumbling at only 14% free disk space on D.
The fragmented files listed may defragment if you run Disk Defragmenter
a second time. You should, however, consider either deleting files no
longer needed or backing them up to DVD/CD to creating more free disk
space. Equally the same point applies to your E drive.

It is unusual to see the MFT record for a partition / drive showing up
with more than 3 fragments. You are showing 5 on C and 6 on E. Running a
disk cleaner, either Disk CleanUp or cCleaner to remove unneeded
temporary files, may restore the MFT on the two drives. A problem with
MFT files is they only ever get larger; never smaller!

Is System Restore monitoring your D and E drives. It should only be
monitoring only your C drive! I cannot tell from the information you
have posted.

Have you tried using cCleaner to clean up your disk?

An alternative is cCleaner (freeware) which does a more thorough job
than Disk CleanUp.
http://www.ccleaner.com/ccdownload.asp
http://www.ccleaner.com/

With any cleaner you need to proceed with caution. To be safe you
should create a restore point before using cCleaner. cCleaner also
offers backup before removal.

When using cCleaner think twice before checking Autocomplete Form
History under Internet Explorer. You do get a warning but this one has
irritating consequences. You may need to restore your system's
recollection of passwords after use so keep a record off computer so
that they can easily be re-entered.

Leave the Scan for Issues option alone.

You still need to remove System Restore points via the More Options tab
in Disk CleanUp.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




W. Watson wrote:
Total 587572. Limit 13453234. Peak 669774.

Can't provide the six. The table keeps changing every second. Is
there a graph? CPU, CPU Time, Mem Usage, Mem Delta, VM Size. Six?
PID/Image Name. If I pause it, Tuner.exe is high on CPU=50. That's
Radio Replay.
System Idle is high for CPU time=5:04:28, SeaMonkey(Mozilla) is high
on Mem Usage=200M, Mem Delta is 0 for all processes, SeaMonkey is
high on VM Size=188M,
It's been 8 hours since I rebooted, and I only have about 5 windows
open, Radio Replay, Canon Zoom Browser, Paint Shop Pro, 2 Folders,
Downloader. Things seem OK. Word 2003 came up in 5 seconds. My
D-drive is an internal WD, 150G, and my E-drive is a USB 300G
WDigital. C is 80% used. D is
86% used, and E is 90% full.

Defrag says C should be defraged. Actually, all three!

Here are the three reports. Note despite the disagreement with drive
letters, they are the only three drives. C-drive is accurately named.

I've removed the folder references from the report. The two smaller
drives, particularly C, gets a lot of activity from me. The USB
larger drive is once and awhile. The two bigger drives have seen big
transfers between each recently. All done three weeks ago.

==============================
Volume (C:)
Volume size = 74.52 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 59.94 GB
Free space = 14.58 GB
Percent free space = 19 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 19 %
File fragmentation = 39 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 161,821
Average file size = 495 KB
Total fragmented files = 13,638
Total excess fragments = 56,093
Average fragments per file = 1.34

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 384 MB
Total fragments = 1

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 13,073
Fragmented folders = 343
Excess folder fragments = 843

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 172 MB
MFT record count = 175,737
Percent MFT in use = 99 %
Total MFT fragments = 5

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Most fragmented files
6,641 1,000 MB \Documents and
Settings\administrator\Local Settings\Temp\My
DVD\Untitled2\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VOB ... removed

========================================
Volume Audio/Video 2007 USB (D:)
Volume size = 233 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 199 GB
Free space = 34.19 GB
Percent free space = 14 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 22 %
File fragmentation = 44 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 1,764
Average file size = 121 MB
Total fragmented files = 243
Total excess fragments = 586
Average fragments per file = 1.33

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 0 bytes
Total fragments = 0

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 143
Fragmented folders = 15
Excess folder fragments = 63

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 2 MB
MFT record count = 1,922
Percent MFT in use = 98 %
Total MFT fragments = 2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Most fragmented files
34 3 MB
\Vegas_Projects\Yellowstone\YS_NGSociety.png 28 205 KB
\Chile2007\Chile_Stills\Other_sources\Thumbs.db 23 98 KB
3 ... removed

======================================
Volume Video/Audio 2006 (E:)
Volume size = 149 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 132 GB
Free space = 17.33 GB
Percent free space = 11 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 31 %
File fragmentation = 62 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 2,117
Average file size = 67 MB
Total fragmented files = 598
Total excess fragments = 3,225
Average fragments per file = 2.52

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 0 bytes
Total fragments = 0

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 153
Fragmented folders = 41
Excess folder fragments = 154

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 3 MB
MFT record count = 2,292
Percent MFT in use = 74 %
Total MFT fragments = 6

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Most fragmented files
308 28 MB \ReplayRadio06\ReplayRadio_Programs\Bob
... removed



Gerry wrote:
Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

You should be able to gather more information from Task Manager. With
the Processes tab open select View, Select, Columns and check the
boxes before Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory size. What are the
figures for the 6 processes using the largest amounts?

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as
it is more informative.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
W. Watson wrote:
I'll check out the tool.

Here's a slight deviation.

I have 1G of memory, but VM is taking up 2G of disk space. I've
noticed when I've been one for many days and have had maybe 10-12
windows up, things slow down. This is particularly true if I bring
up Word 2003. Right now I have 4 browser windows open, and one
mailer window, and rebooted after about 5 days of continuous use. I
brought up Word 2003 in about 5 sec. Before I booted it was taking
2 minutes. Memory leaks or just too much work out of VM?

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:11:28 GMT, "W. Watson"
<wolf_tracks@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I see that one can use of the main menu Accessories->System Tools
to see how much of memory is used, and what the size and use is
off VM. Is there another way to monitor these sizes continually?

You can monitor your page file usage with Bill James's Page File
Monitor for Windows XP. See
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm



Is it possible to change the
size of VM?


Possible? Yes,

A good idea? Not generally.


.

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