Question Receiving "Out Of Memory" errors on programs

[SnakeWayLane]

Hey all.
As of a few days ago, my PC started giving me errors on different web browsers and games with the error messages being related to RAM 95% of the time. The problems usually only start occurring after my PC has been turned on for over an hour. I thought there was something wrong with my RAM so I ran Windows Diagnostics and Memtest, but nothing was found. So I thought the problem was with Windows, so I ran SFC Scanner, reinstalled my graphics drivers and even reinstalled Windows. But I'm still getting the same problem. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

If relevant, my PC:
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2 x 8GB DDR4-3000
MOBO: Asrock B450 Pro4 ATX AM4
SSD: Kingston A400 120GB
HDD: Toshiba 2TB 7200RPM
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1080 Ti
PSU: Corsair TXM Gold 550W 80+ Gold

 

[Colif]

Memory on Win 10 isn't just ram, it also includes the page file which is on the ssd. You can get Out of Memory errors with free ram, as its to do with how much memory was promised to drivers, and if a driver keeps asking for more memory and not giving it back after, you get this.

If you get OOM errors after 1 hour uptime, it is likely a memory leak. Drivers are the most common cause of these.
try running or downloading the Asrock App store, i believe it updates drivers for you - https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B450 Pro4/#Download

 

[SnakeWayLane]

I installed the Asrock App Store but disappointingly, it reported no updates available to me, even after tinkering with it for a few minutes.
Although upon a recent crash, I did notice the available storage space on my SSD shrunk for a minute before returning to how it usually is. So I suspect it may be to do with the page file. I may try manually setting a page size and seeing if it continues.

 

[alexbirdie]

120 GB SSD for win10, some apps etc. is a little bit very small.

SSDs are cheap, and you might buy at least a 256 GB SSD, migrate your current SSD to it ( with samsung migration tool or any other disk-managing software like Paragon disk manager), and you will have no more memory-problems.

For a test you can change the swapspace-location to your D-disk. For sure system will be a little bit slower, but if you do not have any more memory-problems, than my above suggestion is correct.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

To be perfectly honest, the SSD isn't that small. I was working with some restrictions while building my PC, so I got a 120GB SSD, but after W10, my daily apps, my documents, videos, pictures and two games I play often, I still had 12GB left. 120GB goes a long way.
I digress, so far I've tried messing around with it but no improvements in sight. I'll keep going at it but chances are I'm gonna take it to a shop and see what the deal is.

 

[Colif]

messing with page file settings after you getting oom won't really help unless you have previously set it to a smaller amount that what is suggested. Since you are looking in there, how big is your current page file?

I would run https://windirstat.net/and see whats taking up most space on the drive.

You be better off moving your documents, videos, picture libraries to the hdd - link merely used as the descriptions are clear - https://www.dummies.com/computers/o...e-the-location-of-user-folders-in-windows-10/ as that will give the ssd room to shuffle free space.

So I can guess the formatted space on a 120gb ssd is likely about 113gb, so only having 12gb free now does mean ssd is likely running way slower than it should be. I don't know if it could be cause of oom. It shouldn't be.

Can you download and run Driverview - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html

All it does is looks at drivers installed; it won't install any (Don't run any 3rd party driver updaters, they can make it worse)

When you run it, go into view tab and set it to hide all Microsoft drivers, will make list shorter.

Now its up to you, you can look through the drivers and try to find old drivers, or you can take a screenshot from (and including)Driver name to (and including)Creation date.

upload it to an image sharing website and show link here

All I would do is look at driver versions (or dates if you lucky to have any) to see what might have newer versions.

Old drivers best place to look at first for memory leak.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

I did some cleaning of files on my SSD and moved non-essential files to my HDD. I managed to free up another 20GB of space and after restarting my PC, the page file increased and the frequency of the errors has decreased a fair bit, although the problem is still present.
At the moment, my current page file is at 14228MB.

I took your advice and ran driverview. I updated my AMD Chipset drivers but that was about all I could find. I'll let you know if the crashes continue.

If you want to take a look for yourself, I've added a link as requested.
https://ibb.co/dMqmwYv

Update: Unfortunately the errors are still present.

 

[Colif]

well, you should have 16gb of page file since that is how much ram you have. It sort of depends on your usage, i have 32gb of ram but page file is only 5gb, i have never used all of my ram though so there is that.
I wonder if the cause is scarlet crush, the drivers you are using for PlayStation controller. its the oldest driver left on the system now.

You might want to use a program called Poolmon to see what is asking for memory and not releasing it.

you get it from Microsoft - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/poolmon

understanding how to use it is half the battle.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

I managed to get Poolmon working, however even after watching the video multiple times, I'm unsure about what to do and I feel pretty aimless trying to figure out what is causing it.

Looking at the list provided by Poolmon is there any way to specifically figure out what's requesting memory and not releasing it? Thanks.

 

[Colif]

In poolmon, if you press B it shows the item currently using the most bytes

b
Sorts by bytes used. When used with a parenthesis character, the b key sorts by the change in bytes used.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/poolmon-run-time-commands

then he opened cmd up and typed

findstr /s YOURTAG . star.star (I have to type out the stars or forums will remove them so just use shift 8 in cmd, don't right them out). He shows what to type in the text under the video)

the YOURTAG item is found in poolmon on the far left under tag header of the item using most memory (will be top name) - replace YOURTAG with the tag you see here and hit enter and system should tell you the name of the item.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

I sorted by bytes are starting going through the top items by all I got was items like "MmSt" and "Py28" which I haven't really gotten anywhere with. Mainly due to whenever I input the command, it gives me a massive wall of text.

The wall of text includes a lot of things currently running on my PC but doesn't help narrow it down.

 

[Colif]

hmm, way he shows it the driver should be at top of the listing. Can you take screenshots of results and I will see what I can find?

Mmst = Memory manager

The MmSt pool tag is used by the Memory Manager when reserving memory for section prototype PTEs. A prototype PTE is a structure that maps the physical location of a page or set of pages to a memory mapped file. The MmSt allocations reside in Paged Pool memory. MmSt allocations are most commonly seen when the system is under heavy file I/O and has many open files mapped into the memory cache. The Cache Manager should reduce its MmSt allocations when paged pool memory pressure occurs, but this may not always happen quickly enough to prevent some issues.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com...getting-to-know-the-mmst-pool-tag/ba-p/374971

from what I can find py28 isn't a driver but part of windows.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

I'm starting to think the issue starts to arise when I open a specific program, so I'm gonna see if I can figure out if and what that program is.
Anyways, here's the poolmon image.

https://ibb.co/86kNngM

 

[Colif]

So question is, when this happens, is it eating ram or is it commitments? Next time it happens, can you look at task manager/performance/memory tab and see if its ram at max? that makes it easier to know which of the tags to look at.
I think what you need to look at is the difference column, as if something asks for heaps but doesn't give it back, its likely a problem.

Did you run poolmon when you were out of memory as it won't show anything helpful if its just normal operations.

if its in ram this might help - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap

Paged pool = its in the page file on ssd
non paged pool = in ram. Drivers have to be in ram.

see if i can find anything handy.
Paged
FMfn = filter manager. Part of windows that keeps track of file locations on storage
NTff - part of windows memory management


Non paged
MmCa - exfat.sys, fastfat.sys, ntfs.sys, portcls.sys, rdbss.sys, refsv1.sys, savonaccess.sys, udfs.sys
File - To clarify: A "File" object represents the fact that a file (or a device) has been opened for access (it does not represent a read or a write operation to a file). source
NVRM - Nvidia drivers (finally something not windows) although the difference between what its asked for and released is small.

not sure it will help but so far almost all the things i am finding here are parts of windows.

right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

 

[SnakeWayLane]

Heya. I've been busy for the past few days so I've been slow to respond.

I've looked at poolmon and task manager whenever the issue arises, and while using poolmon during one of the times where the errors were occurring and the computer became sluggish, I saw a something in the non paged area on poolmon called "Via8" and "misn" with the two being by and far the highest ranked on the difference column. I wasn't able to screenshot it because snipping tool wouldn't work during this. I digress, I think this may or may not be what has caused it? Although I cannot find much about it online.

 

[Colif]

Via8 - dxgmms2.sys - GPU scheduler GPU sync object

i don't know what MiSn is, it was an unknow tag in Feb 2020. there isn't a lot of info on this tag.

very handy list - https://github.com/zodiacon/PoolMonXv2/blob/master/PoolMonX/res/pooltag.txt

I don't know if the directX thing means anything. Could try updating gpu drivers.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

Thanks. I'll give the list a look if when it happens again.

I've already reinstalled my graphics drivers a few times. Doesn't seem to have done anything.

 

[Colif]

long shot but can you run this for me and I see if it offers any clues - it will create a zip file so if you can upload it to an file sharing website and show a link here, I see if it helps - https://www.sysnative.com/forums/pages/bsodcollectionapp/

I am just wondering if system records any errors when it happens

 

[SnakeWayLane]

Unfortunately, after having two programs crash, nothing was showing up with the program. Although one of the programs that did crash reported an out of memory error with the video memory. So maybe it's something to do with the VRAM?

 

[mdd1963]

Setting recycle bin properties/size manually to a paltry 1-2 GB or so often can free up 5-10% of a drive's space normally reserved for recycle bin....

With quality 500 GB SSDs at $50-$60, the 120 GB units are just not worth the time/trouble any more...(120 GB seemed larger in 2012 under WIn7 when large SSDs were much more expensive)

 

[Colif]

out of video card memory? so we looking in the wrong place. Although all gpu have shared memory they can use.
Maybe explains why Via8 - dxgmms2.sys - GPU scheduler GPU sync object - is showing up as high usage.

Do you have latest Nvidia drivers?

what game is it in? could be a problem in game engine

Try running an anti virus scan and make sure its not a mining program or something.

Download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

The default view is tree structure meaning like your task manager screen, it will show what processes are under each service, but unlike task manager, it shows the ram usage of each part so you can see what is eating your ram. Clicking header field will also sort it by alphabetical

Private bytes = Ram + page file usage
Working set = actual ram usage

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click headers and run an av scan from within the program.

now i normally use this for tracking ram usage, But it can do so much more.
right click on the header field and click Select Columns
Under Process GPU, tick GPU Committed Bytes & GPU Usage

GPU Committed Bytes - now I am guessing but its possible the Committed bytes total of whatever is chewing VRAM should show in this column
GPU usage is just a percentage, maybe not so helpful.
there is no VRAM column on Process Memory tab, vram isn't shared with many systems yet.

process explorer may not be much help here.

I am not sure how to see what is using vram.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

Yeah so I sat with it for a while and I was unable to really figure out what was the problem. The top program in the working set was Memory Compression at around 700,000K? Although I don't think that's really unusual. Every other column was as it should be, with standard programs being at the top.

I'm thinking I'll do a proper reinstall of Windows 10 in a few days. If I see no signs of improvements from that, I might just take it to a repair shop and see what is up with it.

 

[Colif]

memory compression is normal.

Say you open a program during day and close it again. In the past windows would copy all the data direct to hdd after you closed program. If you opened program up again it would have to grab all the data again.
What windows does now is it compresses the data in ram so if you open it up again, it doesn't take as long to get the info. Ram is much faster than most other storage devices (Optane being different since it is ram) so its much faster to open the 2nd time.
it only copies it to storage at shutdown, or if the PC needs the ram for a running program.

I don't know what a repair shop would do about a memory issue.

Does it happen in more than one program? I just curious if it is a game engine problem as most errors in vram are programming ones.

 

[SnakeWayLane]

Does it happen in more than one program? I just curious if it is a game engine problem as most errors in VRAM are programming ones.

It's not limited to games. The issue can occur with basically any program. A few times when I've opened Task Manager, it'll say "Low Memory" and show me a limited amount of info.

 

[Colif]

fresh install might fix it... since we don't know what cause is.

maybe its the vram on the gpu itself. I don't think there is anyway to tell what's using it. I would be curious to know really.
GPU-Z can show how much is being used but not a breakdown. MSI Afterburner also just shows totals.

i see references to gpushark but I can't tell if it shows a breakdown of usage or if it works with win 10 - https://www.techspot.com/downloads/...ark is a simple,AMD/ATI Radeon graphics cards.