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Post by Retribution on Mar 7, 2009 9:07:55 GMT
Hey all, I know this community is home to a few computer techies and I was wondering if I might be able to get some help for a computer issue I have been having.
Basically, after a period of activity my computer gets to a stage where it won't let me initiate any new activities, such as opening a new tab in firefox, a new word document, or an explorer window such as my documents. If I cancel a few things, it will let me open something new, but soon after the problem returns, and eventually I can't have any more than one or 2 things open until I reboot, which usually takes about 5 mins until the comp finally turns off. To me this seems like a memory shortage (at least, that's all google had to say), but with 2 gb of memory it shouldn't be, and task manager also says I have plenty of memory free, and a couple of internet pages, itunes, and a blank word doc shouldn't use 2gb of memory anyway. I have run multiple antivirus scans, antispyware, and even done an entire windows reinstall to try solve the problem, and memtest didn't discover any problems, and device manager still recognises that all of my ram is present. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks heaps for your time Travis.
EDIT: It did not always do this, and I can't recall exactly when it started, however the windows reinstall I did recently would have fixed any windows errors I think.
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Post by dodrudon on Mar 7, 2009 13:21:42 GMT
So after the full Windows reinstall the problem still immediately showed up? Or was there a period of time between the reinstall and when the problem showed up again?
Which antivirus and antispyware programs did you use?
What does task manager say about CPU usage?
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Post by hackenslay on Mar 7, 2009 14:54:19 GMT
Let me add a few questions and a possible solution... did you do a wipe/install, or an install on top of previous install? A wipe then install should have solved your problem, while a re-install wouldn't help. I picked up some malware similar to what you are talking about last year, was using Avast, Adaware and Spybot for scanning and none of them picked it up. Malwarebytes anti-malware picked it up and fixed everything. Give them a shot, couldn't hurt.
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Post by Yomi on Mar 7, 2009 15:53:35 GMT
Quick answer: go do the registry change described in this guide or this one (they're describing the same process). Make sure the second parameter is 4096 or higher. For some reason XP 32-bit has a ridiculously low limit on the number of open windows. [if it's doing it within a few days without 40+ windows open, then you probably have a more serious problem and need to run a tool like gdiview, dheapmon, etc. to see what's causing it] I've had a similar sounding problem on both my XP machines. As far as I can tell, XP has a pretty low limit on the number of open windows that doesn't scale up with RAM. My wife likes to have 40+ open browser windows, and when she used Internet Explorer it would very quickly run out, especially with Quicken and Photoshop also running. You could actually watch how it failed, with Photoshop silently failing to start, then after a few browser windows were closed PS would manage a splash screen or two then fail -- close a few more and it'd get a few UI windows up before dying, close a few more and it'd run. This was on a 4GB machine with plenty of free RAM. After switching her to Firefox with tabs we haven't had the issue on her machine (she runs Vista x64 these days so it's all moot now for her machine). Worse, there seem to be ways to leak the resources. My current XP machine with 3GB starts having issues after a month or two of uptime. I'll open an explorer window and it'll be missing one of the panes. Close some other app and voilá it'll work. But pretty soon it'll be back again even with the reduced number of apps open and quickly spirals down to where I have to reboot (rebooting is evil). Similarly free RAM doesn't seem to be an issue -- it's leaking resources. Looks like there's a description of it in this MSDN article. It basically describes my symptoms -- lots of windows/apps running, plenty of RAM, long intervals between restarts leads to silent failure to open windows. The solution seems to be to edit the registry values. See for instance this guide.
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Post by Yojimbo on Mar 7, 2009 18:26:22 GMT
The problem sounds like a memory leak which could be cuased by a particular app you are running a virus/malware or even bad RAM modules. To me the first simple step is download and burn a boot disc of Memtest 86+ its free and it takes a little while to run but it is good test for the RAM. What apps do you run when this happens see if you run anything know to be poorly designed and have a leak. Then lastly what AV and AS software have you tried running some just don't make the grade and shouldn't be bothered with.
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Post by Retribution on Mar 8, 2009 1:19:56 GMT
Hey all, thanks for the responses.
Firstly, in response to hackenslay, I deleted all the partitions on my hard disk, created new partitions, and then did a windows reinstall, not sure if that counts as a wipe then reinstall or not?
At the moment I am using comodo firewall pro, avast antivirus, and I also have malwarebytes and spyware doctor installed which I use to perform scans about once per week. I read a lot of reviews on all of them and none of them seemed to have any issues, and only one of them is acting as a real time scanner (avast) so there shouldn't be any conflicts there.
My computer does what Kins described, it will open a folder but not let you open to the next subfolder, firefox will open a tab but be missing address bars, or word will open up but be completely white. However, this is after only a few hours or even less, and with only 2 or 3 apps open (eg itunes and NWN, I will try open character builder and it just won't respond). I will go have a look at the articles you linked and try the registry changes and see what happens.
Yojimbo - how would I be able to test if it was a memory leak? I guess I would have to disable everything so only vital apps load on startup and test from there, but I have no idea how I would go about this. I tried memtest86 a while ago and it came up clean, but I will run it again tonight and see what happens.
Dodrudon - I did the reinstall thinking the issue was caused by some sort of registry error or the like, and assumed the reinstall would fix it, so i didn't run the computer at all before reinstalling all of my applications (which all required frequent restarts), and the problem showed up straight away again, so now I am unsure whether it's a problem with the hardware or the software I installed, as I didn't use the comp without the software..
Thanks for the help, I will try out some of the suggestions and let you know what happens
Travis.
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Post by Yojimbo on Mar 8, 2009 21:16:01 GMT
The memory leak can be from autostart apps or apps you are chosing to run the one I see comes to mind is the character builder which I think is a spread sheet which might be a bit massive and cuasing issues. Memtest is just to verify the RAM is ood if you have run it then your set there. I don't have a guide n hand for editing startup apps but should be quick find on google you can check your results with us.
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Post by dodrudon on Mar 8, 2009 23:47:09 GMT
I'm pretty sure it's not a memory leak.
The thing about antivirus and antispyware programs is that there's a lot of adware and spyware that pretend to be legit antiad/antispy programs... but really aren't. So you hafta be careful you're downloading them from the right places.
That shouldn't be the problem though, cuz what use is spyware if it can't spy on you cuz it's breaking your computer? Similarly, you can't serve ads to someone who has a broken comp.
It sounds like you did a clean reinstall, which should fix any software problems. Did you have to reinstall drivers along with apps? Did you have to reinstall ALL apps or just some?
It does sound like your RAM might be going bad. Right click on My Computer -> Properties, and check how much RAM it says you have. Run memtest again. Past that you might have to bring it in for tech support.
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Post by bort on Mar 9, 2009 0:40:52 GMT
This may or may not fix your problem, but is recommended for windows in general.. Run "services.msc" and possibly "msconfig" too from "Start - Run..." and see if you can spot any services set to automatic or programs set to launch at start up that are unnecessary. Either set them to manual or disabled or untick them in the case of "msconfig". This has helped me hugely with performance on my laptop - even from a fresh install a bunch of the services eating up my RAM were windows services which are on by default wasting computer resources when they weren't even serving any useful function for me. I had a similar issue with iTunes running programs in the background when iTunes isn't even open You might consider changing anti virus software too, i had a big problem with Avast recently (looked like a memory leak) where it was eating up my RAM and bringing my laptop to it's knees. I couldn't seem to turn off whichever part Avast was causing the problem so i ditched it, as i've had to do with AVG and Norton in the past. I'm using Avira at the moment which seems to be far better behaved. Hope that helps, good luck.
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Post by Yojimbo on Mar 9, 2009 1:50:46 GMT
dodrudon those spyware/adware/rogueware apps may have intentional memory leaks in them as part of thier damage.
I would note if you want a good AV system and willing to pay my recomendation goes to Kaspersky.
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Post by TJ on Mar 9, 2009 3:28:19 GMT
Iirc Spyware Doctor is a piece of ..... From the Internet that is spyware itself... I think I had a problem with something with a similar name before.
TJ
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Post by dodrudon on Mar 9, 2009 8:59:07 GMT
Bort brings up a good point. Antivirus/antispyware programs sometimes schedule themselves to run scans regularly, which take a lot of CPU cycles and memory. If you have several installed, multiple ones might be running scans. I'd go to Task Manager, shut them all down, and see if that helps.
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Post by s0n0va on Mar 9, 2009 21:35:06 GMT
First off, which version of windows do you have, and has it been updated with all the service packs & critical updates? It sounds like you've already run Memtest86+, by Yojimbos' suggestion. So if that turned out ok, it's likely not your RAM. Real time scanners tend to eat a lot of resources, and having more than one will seriously degrade performance. Malwarebytes appears to be a legit program, although I have no experience with it. I always found Spybot S&D effective so long as you don't enable the TeaTimer (real-time scanner). Comodo Firewall Pro is another I've never tested. I've used Sygate on all my Windows boxes for the past several years now. TJ mentioned that Spyware Doctor is crap, and in my experience he's right, you'd do best to get rid of it. Avast Anti virus I tried out once & got rid of it within 10 minutes due to it eating resources and not finding the viruses I'd downloaded for a test. I found Avira to be one of the best options available. It does have advertisements when it updates however, but it is free. So taking all this into consideration, your problems begin to make a bit more sense. You appear to have multiple anti-virus/spy ware/firewalls installed and potentially running background scans on your computer. I personally feel that it's better to pick one of each and scan what you download before you run it, instead of having the real-time scanners constantly running. Since you're using Firefox, you may consider picking up the NoScript and Flashblock add-ons, they filter out most of the nasty stuff that you would never see in the first place. Also, if you'd like me/us to take a more in-depth look at what all is eating all your resources, there is a set of utilities for Windows put out by Sysinternals. If you'd like to download them it would enable you to more easily post information related to what you'd like help with. All of the optional software I've suggested is free to download and use, they are the programs I am most comfortable with over the years. If you do download/install PSTools and want us to help further debug your computer issues, run from a cmd.exe window: pslist -x > Processes.txt and post the contents of Processes.txt back here Links: Spybot S&D - www.safer-networking.org/index2.htmlSygate - www.tucows.com/preview/213160Avira - www.free-av.com/PSTools - download.sysinternals.com/Files/PsTools.zipUseful Windows Commands - www.ss64.com/nt/
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Post by Retribution on Mar 10, 2009 3:20:30 GMT
Hey again, thanks for the furthr responses
I am running xp home, fully updated with service pack 3. I did a memtest last night, it ran for 12 cycles but then got interrupted, had a sign saying test cancelled for unknown reason, and 124 errors. I wasn't sure if something that caused the interruption caused the errors, so I ran the test again today and it passed 20 cycles with no errors (about 8 hours continuous). Does this mean I should look at some new RAM or was it more likely something else? I ensured all the security software was legit, and only one is running any sort of background scanner (the rest don't start themselves on startup at all, which i have checked in task manager and MS config. Also, I got most of the programs to solve the issue (thinking it was a virus), and it was there first, so it shouldn't be those programmes. I only got spyware doctor to remove a articular virus I had, which it did surprisingly, and so I will get rid of it. Also, I don't have any noticeable issues with performance of running programmes, games run fine, and applications which are already open haven't/don't suffer any noticeable slowdown. The issue is only when trying to open new applications, windows etc, so the use of system resources doesn't actually seem to be a particular problem. I will however try out the PSTools and see if that comes up with anything. Thanks again for the help and the links,
Travis.
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Post by Yojimbo on Mar 10, 2009 19:57:02 GMT
The fact metest did return errors but doesn't consistant suggest motherboard, ram, or cpu.
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