Memory Leaks?

[Elusive_Pastry]

Hi, I recently purchased a Leadtek WinFast GeForce 2 Pro 64 mb ram for my P3 500 with 512 mb ram (AGP 2x is supported). I'm pleased with the speed of the card but lately I have been experiencing memory leaks. It may or may not be related to an event that happened about a week before I got the new card....I shall outline briefly what happened:

First, I doubled my ram to 512 so I could increase my AGP aperture from 64 to 256 (there was no option for 128). About a week after that, I had a complete structural collapse for no apparent reason (3 system files lost or corrupted, including HIMEM.SYS, WIN.COM not found, and my windows folder mysteriously moving from my C drive to my second hard drive...BIOS setup not responding). After many a trial and error with Dell tech support, I unplugged my second hard drive, and everything was back to normal (replugging the second hd worked fine).

Next, I can't remember if this happened before or after I installed the new video card, but my computer no longer shuts down by itself; it sits endlessly at the black DOS screen with a blinking cursor. Next, 99% of the time when I try to restard the computer, I get a Blue Screen of Death saying that there was an error in VXD VCACHE, and I need to hit the reboot button to get past it.

Back to my present problem... More and more often I'm getting a warning message that "System memory is very low. Norton AntiVirus may be unable to continue running properly." (I keep all my virus definition files up to date, by the way.) This happens most often when alt-tabbing in and out of Diablo II. Also, with each Alt-Tab, I notice that my free resources in My Computer Properties drops by a large amount. Also, I get a complete lock-up after playing through a few missions of MechWarrior IV (it happened much more frequently if I had it set to Ultra-High detail with Anti-Aliasing on). Neither one of these problems occured when I was using my old TNT card.

I have the latest LeadTek drivers, but I just noticed that nVidia's Detonator 3 drivers v 12.41 came out last month....would using the Det3 drivers solve this or is there another solution?

 

[Lowlypawn]

One word “DELL”




Joking aside I would try the detonator drivers for sure even if I was having no problems. If that doesn’t work try CTR,ALT,DEL and close all the program not necessary. If that doesn’t work U might need to format and reinstall windows. Then if the problem comes back u will know it’s hardware and not software.


Good luck & Cya


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[ejsmith2]

When I got my Dell desktop (years ago), I was ignorant because I'd been out of the loop for 4 years. I didn't know up from down.

A year later when I got my laptop, I was completely clued in. The very first time I booted the laptop, I had the boot floppy in and the win98 disk in the cdrom. I repartitioned and formatted, and did a clean install of win98. I used my desktop to download the drivers from their support page.

There's some things Dell does right, but computers isn't one of them.......


(BTW, my advice is to do a clean install (i.e. microwave the Dell restore disk, if they are sending them out nowadays, and use the OS disk))

 

[lhgpoobaa]

*nods* i hear ya budd.
ive got the 32mb version of your card.
with win2k ive had problems i thought were video associated, but turns out that a reinstall of directx and the detonator drivers fixes them, INCLUDING most memory leaks.

also, ive found one game that DOES NOT like having 512mb of system ram!
or more precisely, it has trouble detecting/allocating itself if the swapfile is anything more than absolute minimum. as a result it halts on the splash screen, then overflows my physical memeory, and thrashes my hard disk as it also overflows my swap file. the game is Need For Speed 5, Porsche. (see post entitled: Need For Speed 5 Porsche + win2k.)

P.S. have you tried overclocking the memory on your leadtek yet?
did u get it up to 450?

regards,
Master Pop + Hamster

"i love the smell of Overclocking in the morning!" Says my Hamster.

 

[Elusive_Pastry]

Ok, here's a new problem I reduced my agp aperture back to 64 mb, and it fixed the restart and shut down problem, but now when I try to play Diablo II or Half-Life (direct3d and opengl, respectively), I have 3 inches of black screen on my right and 1 inch on top, as if that's where the monitor ends. The game resolution is fine, but what's up with the screen size??? My desktop looks fine, so I can't use any kind of screen correction...grrrrr!

 

[Elusive_Pastry]

Btw, I haven't tried overclocking my card. I don't think I can get any noticable difference out of it with just a P3 500 Plus, its been running at 59-61 degrees C with 70 C being the critical temp...is that normal?

 

[Guest]

70C is pretty #$#$%#@ hot. I would do anything in your power to make your running temperature (61C) the absolute max that your CPU obtains. High temperatures cause shorter life spans for CPUs, and a high temp could result in glitches, crashes, and slow running speeds. Add some fans, like a PCI screw in fan or something. Get a better fan+heatsink on your CPU or better yet, upgrade it a save the hassle of tearing the thing off. Just some words of advice...

 

[Elusive_Pastry]

Um, I think you misread my post... My video card runs at a temp of 59-61 C, and it's maximum temp is 70 C

 

[lhgpoobaa]

im my experience video card GPU's are more tolerant of heat than a computer CPU.
however 61 does seem a little warm.
then again... i once overclocked a TNT2 (heatsink only, no fan) from 125/150 all the way up to 157/205!
and boy... did it run hot (u could fry an egg on the heatsink)

Question:
whats your case temp?


"i love the smell of Overclocking in the morning!" Says my Hamster.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

oh yeah... BTW...
i found that directX 8.0 caused some memory leak problems for me.
if your problems continue try using a different version.
i know the 8.0a's are out, and if you hunt around you can also find the 8.1's(unofficial)

the 8.1 work fine for me.

"i love the smell of Overclocking in the morning!" Says my Hamster.

 

[kal326]

Oh ya, thats a fun one I did once. NFS5 sucked up about 800 megs of memory before I realized wtf was going on. I will have to try it on XP sometime and see if it still has, um, problems.

ID10T errors are the cause of most consumer's computer problems.

 

[Guest]

When it says running out of system memory, it actually means that Win98 has run out of virtual addresses for your memory. It's pretty understandable considering the amount of system memory you have installed. You may want to set your computer for decreased swap file usage and so you. The best place to get this help is to visit the Operating System forum. Good luck.

 

[Lowlypawn]

He has 512 mb of ram! How much do u have? if 512 is not enough then what? I only have 256 with no problems.

Thx & cya

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[Guest]

What we're talking about here is not that he is running out of RAM, but that the system is running out of addresses to address the RAM that he has. That is why Win98SE will pop up with the message, out of system resources and so on.

 

[Lowlypawn]

Hmmmmmmmm Never heard of that. but then again that dosen't mean much.

Thx & Cya

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