Memory Problem or something more sinister?

Laptop sat a few days on. Returned to find it unresponsive.
re-boot.
All back looking normal except try to run app and says not enough resources.
Cold Boot.
All back looking normal now runs a few apps I tried.
But, A memory app I have says only 90K of 3.3G is available.
Process Explorer says only 100K of 3.3G available.
I see from Process Explorer that no app using any unreasonable memory.
System Cache 110K


Where else should I look or try ?

Memory fault or something more sinister ?

Billy,

Where else should I look or try ?

First thing to try : See if you can boot your laptop into its BIOS and
switch to a full boot. You should than be able to see the BIOS checking all
of the RAM.

Second: On cold boot hit F8 t get XP to start into "safe mode" (not starting
most of the extra drivers and services). See what your memory app and
Process Explorer than says.

Third: you could try to boot an OS from USB stick [1] and see what that
tells you.

[1] You could start with a bare-bones DOS or Linux , but IIRC there are a
number of bootable USB and CD images filled diagnostic tools. Download and
write / burn to USB / CD and they are ready for usage.

Hope that helps.

Billy wrote:

Laptop sat a few days on. Returned to find it unresponsive.
re-boot.
All back looking normal except try to run app and says not enough
resources.
Cold Boot.
All back looking normal now runs a few apps I tried.
But, A memory app I have says only 90K of 3.3G is available.
Process Explorer says only 100K of 3.3G available.
I see from Process Explorer that no app using any unreasonable memory.
System Cache 110K


Where else should I look or try ?

Memory fault or something more sinister ?



I'd bring up the Task Manager. Right-click the
Task Bar, to start it from a menu.

https://i.postimg.cc/L4tV1fcT/task-manager.gif

But your posting already tells us, the answer
is not likely to be in there. You can see in
my sample, I've sorted by memory pigs in Process
explorer, and since you've just started the system,
there would hardly be any regular tasks to eat memory.

The Paged and Non-Pages pools can't do it, because
they are limited in WinXP to a percentage of memory.
If something tried to radically go past the limit,
I think the machine would freeze.

If the video card had developed an appetite (via a
BIOS setting change for shared memory), then your
3.3GB number would be smaller. So that's not it.
Your number is high enough, it's not likely
to be a bus address map issue.

You could run a copy of V5.01 from here, from the
downloads 50% of the way down the page. One pass is
sufficient. One thing to look for, is whether the
numbers shown on the screen when it is running,
make sense (testing 4GB total, perhaps lifting part
of it out of the way, and only actually testing 3GB -
testing is done in 2GB or 1GB chunks).

http://www.memtest.org/

And CPUZ, the ZIP version would do.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

It can tell you what's in each slot of the laptop.

Maybe you have 2x2G installed for example, giving 3.3G free.

You can restrict memory via boot.ini (MAXMEM), but
that "3.3G" number keeps haunting us, as it cuts
off all sorts of misbehavior.

We need a consumer. A consumer that is not
visible in Task Manager. One way to do that, would
be with the (old) free version of DataRAM RAMDisk.
It's a driver level RAMDisk, which means the memory
likely disappears before it's offered as "free". Mine
is set up to use PAE memory, which is why it has no
effect on AWE (below 4GB) memory. Modern versions of
the product, are no longer allowed to munch on PAE
memory, and I think someone had words with the developer :-(

Paul

My laptop only recognizes 3G of the 22G chip sets installed.

I downloaded a memtest .iso and burned a CD on this same laptop.
Seems right after I shutdown the boot I can get things to run for a while.

I booted the CD and ran the test for 5 passes and all tested OK.

I am using a Samsung SSD 500G as my drive if that matters.

I just interchanged the memories to see what will it bring.

I still see
Physical total = 3.47G,
Phys Avail = 30MBytes.
Virtual 2.1G, Virtual Avail = 2.1G
Page File 6.8G
PageFile Avail 2.8G

System managed size for paging.

Process Explorer shows
Idle 90%
SeaMonkey Privates Bytes 150,976K Working Set 61,544K
All others half or less.


Paul wrote:
Billy wrote:

Laptop sat a few days on. Returned to find it unresponsive.
re-boot.
All back looking normal except try to run app and says not enough
resources.
Cold Boot.
All back looking normal now runs a few apps I tried.
But, A memory app I have says only 90K of 3.3G is available.
Process Explorer says only 100K of 3.3G available.
I see from Process Explorer that no app using any unreasonable memory.
System Cache 110K


Where else should I look or try ?

Memory fault or something more sinisterÂ* ?



I'd bring up the Task Manager. Right-click the
Task Bar, to start it from a menu.

https://i.postimg.cc/L4tV1fcT/task-manager.gif

But your posting already tells us, the answer
is not likely to be in there. You can see in
my sample, I've sorted by memory pigs in Process
explorer, and since you've just started the system,
there would hardly be any regular tasks to eat memory.

The Paged and Non-Pages pools can't do it, because
they are limited in WinXP to a percentage of memory.
If something tried to radically go past the limit,
I think the machine would freeze.

If the video card had developed an appetite (via a
BIOS setting change for shared memory), then your
3.3GB number would be smaller. So that's not it.
Your number is high enough, it's not likely
to be a bus address map issue.

You could run a copy of V5.01 from here, from the
downloads 50% of the way down the page. One pass is
sufficient. One thing to look for, is whether the
numbers shown on the screen when it is running,
make sense (testing 4GB total, perhaps lifting part
of it out of the way, and only actually testing 3GB -
testing is done in 2GB or 1GB chunks).

http://www.memtest.org/

And CPUZ, the ZIP version would do.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

It can tell you what's in each slot of the laptop.

Maybe you have 2x2G installed for example, giving 3.3G free.

You can restrict memory via boot.ini (MAXMEM), but
that "3.3G" number keeps haunting us, as it cuts
off all sorts of misbehavior.

We need a consumer. A consumer that is not
visible in Task Manager. One way to do that, would
be with the (old) free version of DataRAM RAMDisk.
It's a driver level RAMDisk, which means the memory
likely disappears before it's offered as "free". Mine
is set up to use PAE memory, which is why it has no
effect on AWE (below 4GB) memory. Modern versions of
the product, are no longer allowed to munch on PAE
memory, and I think someone had words with the developer :-(

Â*Â* Paul

Billy wrote:

My laptop only recognizes 3G of the 22G chip sets installed.

I downloaded a memtest .iso and burned a CD on this same laptop.
Seems right after I shutdown the boot I can get things to run for a while.

I booted the CD and ran the test for 5 passes and all tested OK.

I am using a Samsung SSD 500G as my drive if that matters.

I just interchanged the memories to see what will it bring.

I still see
Physical total = 3.47G,
Phys Avail = 30MBytes.
Virtual 2.1G, Virtual Avail = 2.1G
Page File 6.8G
PageFile Avail 2.8G

System managed size for paging.

Process Explorer shows
Idle 90%
SeaMonkey Privates Bytes 150,976K Working Set 61,544K
All others half or less.


Paul wrote:
Billy wrote:

Laptop sat a few days on. Returned to find it unresponsive.
re-boot.
All back looking normal except try to run app and says not enough
resources.
Cold Boot.
All back looking normal now runs a few apps I tried.
But, A memory app I have says only 90K of 3.3G is available.
Process Explorer says only 100K of 3.3G available.
I see from Process Explorer that no app using any unreasonable memory.
System Cache 110K


Where else should I look or try ?

Memory fault or something more sinister ?

I tried to make my pagefile size larger, then use copies
of TestLimit to test the behavior. And in my test setup,
it works the way you would expect it to. When the last
copy of TestLimit cannot obtain enough RAM, the "low memory"
notice appear and TestLimit won't go any further. If you
kill off the TestLimit programs that are running, the
memory is returned, the pagefile no longer needs to
carry it all.

Looking at your numbers, something is filling the available
virtual memory, but it is also leaving some

In my Performance options, for "Memory usage", mine is set to

Adjust for best performance of:

[X] Programs [ ] System Cache

so less of an attempt should be made to turn the
memory into a "System Cache". Whatever that means.

The more modern versions of Windows have two caches.
There is the System Read cache (and that is not
charged against memory, so there is no numeric field
showing the size). As soon as the computer needs the
memory, it is instantly freed up.

The other kind of cache, is a System Write cache,
and that uses memory as a buffer. But only 1/8th ro
1/10th of memory is used to speed up writes. Those
bytes are charged, so you can see the Task Manager
memory line rise if the write cache is being used.

But none of this really aligns with what yours is doing.
While it could be the "Adjust for best performance" tick box,
I don't know what kind of System Cache they have in mind.
The way Read Caches work, they're a free lunch, so there's
really no reason not to use them.

Paul