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How to fix "Paged Pool" memory problem - Page 3

Forum Index > Tech Support
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Ezareth
Profile Joined August 2010
United States60 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-25 02:11:00
August 25 2010 01:37 GMT
#41
The install will call it Dubgging Tools for Windows(86) or the equivalent 64 bit extension.

Just CD to "\Program Files\" and do a DIR and you'll see what it is called.

Also I've had this happen again, but only after playing for 8 hours straight. Either SCII or one of the drivers it is using has a memory leak. After ending a FFA I had 300MB paged pool usage and I didn't even have a game running, I was sitting in a menu.

The beforementioned "solutions" will address this and keep it from happening as frequently as it has in the past for people, but it only bandaids the problem, not fix it.
Hope is the Denial of Reality
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10342 Posts
August 25 2010 04:35 GMT
#42
On August 17 2010 08:13 Ezareth wrote:
All, I have a pretty sweet system and continued getting this error. I went through these steps and found the max Virtual Page Limit for XP32 bit is 490MB, mine was already set to 384MB.

I did some more research at microsoft and found this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb870880(v=VS.85).aspx

Mainly "System virtual address (VA) space on 32-bit systems can become exhausted due to fragmentation."

I ran a degragmentation analysis and saw a 3.46 GB SCII file that was fragmented in 237 places among other things. Basically if this is happening, as lame as it sounds try defragging your computer. The installation of SCII as well as the ton of large patches since, are guaranteed to cause fragmentation on smaller performance sets and smaller hard drives like many of us use for our applications.

I haven't had this issue happen since.

Just to clarify, virtual address space and the paged pool are completely separate things. Virtual address space is the memory allocated to a process, virtualized so the application sees a full 32 bit address space. The paged pool is a kernel-only block of memory allocated at startup. Virtual address space fragmentation only becomes an issue as a process approaches 2GB of memory usage and tries to allocate a contiguous chunk of memory. There is no way to "defragment" the virtual address space other than restarting the program and hoping it doesn't allocate as much memory, and this still doesn't change the fact that the virtual address space and paged pool are entirely separate entities.

In short, defragmenting your hard drive will have no effect at all as not only will this have no effect on memory fragmentation, it won't even touch the paged pool as that is within the kernel only.
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
TL+ Member
Ezareth
Profile Joined August 2010
United States60 Posts
August 26 2010 00:38 GMT
#43
Not trying to be argumentative but Microsoft is saying exactly the opposite. Basically the "process" is the kernel.

Windows Memory Limits

Paged pool
Limited by available kernel-mode virtual address space or the PagedPoolLimit registry key value.

Windows Vista: Limited only by kernel mode virtual address space. Starting with Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1), the paged pool can also be limited by the PagedPoolLimit registry key value.
Windows Home Server and Windows Server 2003: 530 MB
Windows XP: 490 MB
Windows 2000: 350 MB

I know for a fact that this has happened only once since I've defragged these files and only then after playing for 8 hours straight on a weekend. It used to happen several times daily and defragging is the only thing I've done since I was already set to max page pool.
Hope is the Denial of Reality
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10342 Posts
August 26 2010 00:47 GMT
#44
Of course virtual address space exists in the kernel too for drivers and the system. But defragmenting files on disk does nothing to free up contiguous address space, and the virtual address space in the kernel is often huge anyway. Are you using Windows XP? This is the only OS that should really have the paged pool issue any more since the article you just linked explains that the paged pool is limited by virtual address space in the kernel since Vista, which should be many hundreds of megabytes. Unless there is some incredibly obscure issue with memory mapped files and disk fragmentation, I don't see how it's possible for defragmenting to do anything at all as fragmentation is handled by the filesystem driver and never exposed to the rest of the system.
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
TL+ Member
triangle
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States3803 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-26 05:38:48
August 26 2010 05:34 GMT
#45
I'm having this problem as well. Operating system is windows XP sp3.

My computer has a tiny solid state drive which basically makes it impossible for me to install SC2 on my computer. Instead, I have it installed on an external hard drive.

I was getting paged pool errors until I made a page file on the external drive.
+ Show Spoiler [for what I did] +
My computer -> properties -> advanced -> performance -> advanced -> virtual memory.

Then I made a custom sized page file o the external drive

However, I now get delayed write errors when I plug in the external drive (I never get them when the drive is not plugged in). How concerned should I be about these, and is there any way to resolve this issue?

Thank you so much!
Also known as waterfall / w4terfall
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10342 Posts
August 26 2010 06:51 GMT
#46
If the pagefile is on an external disk, the disk needs to be connected permanently.
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
TL+ Member
triangle
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States3803 Posts
August 26 2010 17:43 GMT
#47
On August 26 2010 15:51 R1CH wrote:
If the pagefile is on an external disk, the disk needs to be connected permanently.

As far as I can tell I have 2 gb allotted on the main disk and 2 gb allotted on the external. Is it only possible to have 1 page file?

Also, would this be fixable by always booting with the external attached? I rarely disconnect from the external. Say I disconnect from the external and later want to reconnect. If I turn my computer off, then plug in the external, then boot up, will that resolve the issues?

Sorry if any of these questions are silly.
Also known as waterfall / w4terfall
Ezareth
Profile Joined August 2010
United States60 Posts
August 30 2010 21:55 GMT
#48
On August 26 2010 09:47 R1CH wrote:
Of course virtual address space exists in the kernel too for drivers and the system. But defragmenting files on disk does nothing to free up contiguous address space, and the virtual address space in the kernel is often huge anyway. Are you using Windows XP? This is the only OS that should really have the paged pool issue any more since the article you just linked explains that the paged pool is limited by virtual address space in the kernel since Vista, which should be many hundreds of megabytes. Unless there is some incredibly obscure issue with memory mapped files and disk fragmentation, I don't see how it's possible for defragmenting to do anything at all as fragmentation is handled by the filesystem driver and never exposed to the rest of the system.


Yes I'm using XP. I was under the impression that only XP users have been experiencing this bug due to the limitations of 32bit XP and a static amount of VAS.

On August 27 2010 02:43 triangle wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 26 2010 15:51 R1CH wrote:
If the pagefile is on an external disk, the disk needs to be connected permanently.

As far as I can tell I have 2 gb allotted on the main disk and 2 gb allotted on the external. Is it only possible to have 1 page file?

Also, would this be fixable by always booting with the external attached? I rarely disconnect from the external. Say I disconnect from the external and later want to reconnect. If I turn my computer off, then plug in the external, then boot up, will that resolve the issues?

Sorry if any of these questions are silly.


This issue particular issue isn't related to your pagefile as that is different than your virtual page pool. I don't see a real reason to put your pagefile on another disk regardless as if the harddrive you are running your OS on is almost full you're going to be running into other more serious issues.
Hope is the Denial of Reality
unkkz
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
Norway2196 Posts
September 05 2010 20:51 GMT
#49
In short with the Win XP dissing, upgrading to Windows 7 should pretty much remove the problem alltogether? If so, a bit offtopic probably, how much more demanding of your system is Windows 7 vs XP?
Coloris
Profile Joined October 2010
1 Post
October 21 2010 19:29 GMT
#50
hi all,
i tried to fix it according to the opening post, but i encountered some problems along the way.

while the symchk for "ntoskrnl.exe" gave out the result as in the screenshot, the check for "ntkrnlpa.exe" gave out 0 for both results. i looked into the folder and there isnt even a file named like that...running an advanced search didnt find the file on my drive at all

also, trying to get the symbols got me following message:
"SYMCHK: Warning: Processing errors were encountered. Results may be inaccurate."

concerning my system:
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Memory: 4094MB RAM
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Graphic Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
OS: Vista Buisness x64 SP2

thx in advance
EGD Eric
Profile Joined October 2010
Canada5 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-10-25 02:48:34
October 25 2010 02:46 GMT
#51
I'm getting "no symbols" where you have paged limit listed. I followed all your instructions up to the point where I'm supposed to check the paged limit. I get "failed to download file, error returned was 2. (but then again, that's what's on your screenshot, so maybe this is the desired result?)

I noticed that after I followed instructions 1 & 2 (symchk...ntokrnl.exe, symchk ... ntkrnlpa.exe, etc..
2 more times to make sure I did it right, I get the error 3 times for both files now.
Shuriko
Profile Joined July 2010
United States8 Posts
November 13 2010 16:18 GMT
#52
I did this and it didnt work. please help, i keep getting this

[image loading]

Life is what happens when your to busy making other plans.
EGD Eric
Profile Joined October 2010
Canada5 Posts
November 14 2010 19:09 GMT
#53
Shuriko, you should try downloading/installing debugging tools for windows first. If you already did, try checking in your program files folder, see if its really there. Maybe its just named differently. I had the same problem, the directory for me was actually:

C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x86)
jtype
Profile Blog Joined April 2009
England2167 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-28 19:35:30
November 28 2010 19:34 GMT
#54
I was really grateful to find this guide as I had tried every combination of pagefile sizes and setups that i could think of, but nothing seemed to affect the actual displayed size of the pagefile in the system information on process explorer. Following your guide has changed that and now it's set at around 368 (only using the "max" reg file actually changed it, btw).

Unfortunately, however, I still keep getting slowdowns and crashes in any game that I play, along with various other errors on other programs (like winamp, mediamonkey, etc) that seem to be related to this issue. The only game that specifically gives me the paging pool error is SC2, but that's only on occasion, usually it will slow down and then textures will start to disappear (leaving yellow-coloured space where they were before). This is also happening in the other games that I play. The only solution, when this happens is to restart my computer, but then it's only a matter of hours before it happens all over again.

My system is more than capable of handling the games that I play, even on high settings, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any suggestions?
AmpMan
Profile Joined December 2010
Germany1 Post
December 12 2010 00:36 GMT
#55
I was about to quit playing SC2, because of this Problem. Your Guide worked just fine. I only had to restart before step 6.

Thanks alot, there's no better Guide to fix this Problem in the Net.
Brandish
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
United States339 Posts
February 09 2011 06:02 GMT
#56
sorry for necroposting but

My starcraft 2 now crashes upon launch after doing this
ulibuli
Profile Joined February 2011
Mexico1 Post
February 25 2011 00:09 GMT
#57
I need to do all of those steps where my sc2 is installed? or in my S.O
""
sicajung
Profile Joined June 2010
United Kingdom297 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-23 09:17:25
March 23 2011 09:15 GMT
#58
is it normal that my sc2 eats up to 1.5gb of RAM. im using windows 7 x64. and i only have 4gb of ram so that 1.5gb is kinda big for me. this occurs to me after patch 1.3 while b4 that i dont have any problem with it whatsoever. my sc2 always runs at around 1gb or below. and i only play at low-medium settings.

can someone help me? what could be the problem ?
zarpthunder
Profile Joined April 2011
United States1 Post
April 10 2011 23:04 GMT
#59
I have a problem. on the second command it says passed+ignored files=0
plz tell me if this matters or not
BobGayman
Profile Joined April 2011
89 Posts
April 10 2011 23:29 GMT
#60
What's wrong with allocating more swap space?
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