I cleanup temporary internet files and cookies every day - every time I'm
about to close IE. I do the disk clean up very often.

I have also seen this issue on Windows Server. On one of my work assignments
I
was investigating exactly the same pattern with physical memory usage going
up after which the server started responding very slowly and finally the
remote session was disconnected. Backend servers were processing 10 GB files
and services needed more time than what was theoretical time span and they
were sometimes failing and nobody could explain why. This issue resurfaced
in the form of database replication issues, network timing issue and other.
When running on test server I had to request server reboot. Once when test
server stopped responding while I was monitoring this memory usage issue I
left it running over the weekend and decided to request reboot on Monday
morning, however the system recovered on it's own as the service completed
or failed processing the data and exited. Memory was released, server
recovered and was responsive again.

I think this issue might be caused by cache management and heap
fragmentation. Heap fragmentation contributes to higher memory usage, but
the primary source of the problem seems to be cache management. I know exact
steps to reproduce this issue, so I can just avoid it. Now I can predict
when the system is about to stop responding and take corrective action -
stop and start again the application which is using 1 GB or bigger file.



"Badger" wrote in message
...
When was the last time you did a Disk Cleanup to get rid of temporary
internet files and cookies?

"Robert Janik" wrote in message
...
I regularly see issue where Vista runs out of physical memory and starts
swapping memory into the page file and as hard drive operations
dramatically increase explorer stops responding or is responding very
slowly. One example is a situation where I have opened Visual Studio ,
while editing 3D scene in trueSpace. After opening and closing a 3D scene
several times I experienced very slow response from OS. Closing trueSpace
and starting again helps to solve the problem for a while. I didn't quite
understand what was going on until recently when I was burning ISO images
stored on hard drive to a dvd and started investigating deeper.

My configuration:
Machine: Asus R1E (tablet)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz
RAM: 4GB
OS: Vista Ultimate 64-bit

I was burning images with size of around 4 GB using Nero Burning. When I
start the application for the first time and start burning an image,
physical memory usage goes up in about 50 - 100 MB increments until
reaching 4 GB, then OS starts using page file extensively and hard disk
operations increase. Burning finishes and physical memory usage goes back
down. Verification of data written on DVD starts and memory usage goes up
again the same way. When verification finishes I select another ISO image
and continue burning without closing the application. However from now on
things get worse. When I start burning another image memory usage goes up
again, hard drive operations increase to the point where I cannot use the
machine. Explorer stops responding. I press Ctrl-Alt-Del and it takes
about 15 minutes before I see black screen as OS is trying to open secure
logon screen, then after another 5 minutes I see an error "Failure to
open secure logon screen". I leave the machine running and it is able to
finish burning. Os starts responding, but very slowly, I still cannot
open logon screen, but I'm able to start task manager by right clicking
on taskbar (very slow again) and selecting menu item. Physical memory
usage is high and doesn't go down anymore. When verification of burned
content starts the situation repeats with high physical memory usage,
high hard drive usage and slow explorer response. At this point we are
not burning data, just reading data from dvd and comparing to data on
hard drive. When the process finishes OS starts responding. Free physical
memory is 0 and memory used 4 GB. When I add up virtual memory allocated
by all processes, it adds up to 1.5 GB If I add kernel memory usage I see
in task manager it is all together no more than 2 GB. Where the rest of
physical memory has gone? The application's Working set is only around
150 MB as reported by task manager and 100 MB Commit size. I'm closing
the application.
I rebooted the machine and tried again. There are no other applications
running, nothing on the background, no antivirus, only basic icons in
tray (sound, network etc). I started burning images again, first attempt
goes with physical memory of only around 1 GB and holding steady until it
finished, but on the second round everything repeats again, memory usage
going up OS slowing down. I tried a different application, but I see
exactly the same pattern.
I cannot believe that exactly the same pattern with memory usage and slow
OS response is caused by memory leaks. If I consider different scenarios
burning large files, working with 3D modeling software and visual studio
and other situations I cannot believe that all these applications have
memory leaks or suffer from bugs that would create this issue.
The issue seems to be related to files 1 GB, but it is possible that I
would just need to work with 1 GB files longer without closing
applications to reproduce the problem (as it happened with trueSpace
where files certainly didn't even reach 1 GB level, but I always worked
with it the whole day).

Hypothesis:
When I start an application for the first time and start working with
large files, it needs to load content into a buffer which means it
allocates space on the heap. The application processes the buffer and
releases it, allocates space for another buffer and so on. As new
allocations are made the the request goes to backend allocator and since
new buffer can be of bigger size, a new allocation is made. As the
application runs new allocations may cause splitting large blocks and
when a new request is made a new large block is allocated.
This goes on until the whole segment is taken and a new segment of memory
allocated. As memory is getting more and more fragmented and new
allocations made, the system eventually runs out of physical memory. Even
though blocks of memory are de-committed, lots of memory stays reserved
and this is the reason that task manager gives information about 2 GB
committed out of 4 GB for all processes and for the application causing
the issue 100 - 150 MB committed size.

I know that Vista uses by default low fragmentation frontend allocator.
Is it possible that these applications switch explicitly to look aside
list? Could this cause the problem?
Is there a way to configure memory management and optimize it to solve
the problem?