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Geek Culture / what are the symptoms of RAM problems?

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Green Gandalf
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Playing: Malevolence:Sword of Ahkranox, Skyrim, Civ6.
Posted: 30th Mar 2009 22:45
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In the last few months my, admittedly ancient, PC has been slowing up on trivial tasks. I have various bits of software which are supposed to tune up the system but it's still painfully slow at times - with a lot of disk activity.

The PC only has 256 MB of RAM which I know is small by modern standards, but it's only in the last few weeks that I've been getting problems. For example, I frequently get "Windows is increasing you virtual memory" messages even when I'm not doing much.

Out of curiousity I've just run DXDIAG under the following conditions:

1. With AV running plus IE browsing Geek Culture : 332 MB.
2. With IE alone : 244 MB.
3. With nothing (except DXDIAG and whatever the system loads behind the scenes) : 171 MB.

Is this normal? My guess is that things must slow up when the Pagefile is being used - but why am I only getting obvious symptoms now?

What are the symptoms of partial RAM failure? Does the Pagefile take up the slack - or is the failure catastrophic? I have no idea.

Does anyone have any concrete suggestions? (Yes, I am about to get a new PC with lots of RAM, but I'd still like to know so I can better recognise symptoms in future.)
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MIDN90
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Posted: 30th Mar 2009 22:46
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Memory leak is the first thing that comes to mind.
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 30th Mar 2009 22:49
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Some software does seem to fail miserably when Windows starts paging memory; perhaps due to naughty speed shortcuts. Flatout2 springs to mind, as does Mercedes Benz World Racing.

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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 30th Mar 2009 23:11 Edited at: 30th Mar 2009 23:13
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Quote: "Memory leak is the first thing that comes to mind. "


Yes. I wondered about that - but what would be causing it?

I've just checked DXDIAG after a re-boot and without any other open apps and it says that about 171 MB is used. I then checked Task Manager and the total of all the processes running was about 68 MB. So where did the other 100 MB go? Is Windows itself taking up the rest without being included in the total?

Interestingly, there were 6 copies of something called "svchost.exe" running. What are they for?

Quote: "Some software does seem to fail miserably when Windows starts paging memory;"


My question is: why is Windows having to page memory when so little is supposed to be running? [Edit: It only starts paging, presumably, in case 1 of my first post.]
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 30th Mar 2009 23:17
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Windows starts paging early to prevent total system hangs. Paging little chunks early prevents having to page huge chunks later on. Try OS X with 512Mb of RAM if you want to see what happens if you don't start paging early.

(i.e. it's unusable)

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James H
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 00:07
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I know nothing about this really but from what a mate of mine was babbling on about you could turn prefetch off, or find a safe way to "reset" it to treat the system as if it was freshly installed. If however this info is useless/way off the mark I apologise in advance - my friend has a tendency to go beyond what he knows and recite bits of info to suit the need of the issue, although there are other times when what he tells me is true and he understands it instead of pretending to...
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bitJericho
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 00:09 Edited at: 31st Mar 2009 00:15
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I think prefetch [edit: er, superfetch I mean] is only a feature in vista/win7. I doubt he's running vista on a machine that old.

Sounds to me like a memory leak as well. I'd check the services that are running. There's some handy services guide here:

http://www.blackviper.com/

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 00:10
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171Mb to be honest is about normal for XP when nothing's running.

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James H
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 00:12 Edited at: 31st Mar 2009 00:16
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Superfetch is vista only, prefetch was introduced in xp
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Prefetch

btw my mate does have a Computer Science degree(just about) otherwise I wouldn`t even have considered posting
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Benjamin
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 00:43 Edited at: 31st Mar 2009 00:43
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Quote: "171Mb to be honest is about normal for XP when nothing's running."

We have a PC downstairs that runs XP with only 256MB of memory, and at one point without any other applications running it used roughly 170MB by itself. I think after reinstalling everything it went down to 110MB or so.

Multisync - TCP Server/Client Multiplayer Plugin (DBP/DBCe)
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 01:01
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My Eee idles at 150Mb with NOD32 running... my desktop, 210mb. It does have six PCI cards installed; are drivers devouring RAM?

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MIDN90
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 01:54
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Quote: "My Eee idles at 150Mb with NOD32 running... my desktop, 210mb. It does have six PCI cards installed; are drivers devouring RAM?"


If it's made by Apple, then yes.
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 02:42
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Obviously not, considering as Eees are not made by Apple, but ASUS and runs either Linux or Windows.

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djmaster
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 14:08
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ive got 550mb ram usage on normal when doing nothing,only msn opened and avg internet security,but i suggest you replace the ram since 512mb ram is soooooo cheap

A.K.A. chargerbandit
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 31st Mar 2009 15:27
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Thanks for the discussion everyone.

I'll soon be replacing this old machine - but I'll keep it as a backup so it'll probably be worth replacing the RAM with the biggest the machine will support.
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mamaji4
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2009 00:14
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Troubleshooting PCs has become much easier than when we had to have a scope and meter for debugging, a soldering iron and bunch of spare components and the circuit manual before we could find the fault.
If you suspect the RAM, just swap out the stick with a good one and you'll know if its the problem. Generally if there's a RAM problem you'd get a POST error(audio or visual), so I don't think its the RAM.
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Don Malone
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2009 03:13 Edited at: 3rd Apr 2009 03:22
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Quote: "Interestingly, there were 6 copies of something called "svchost.exe" running. What are they for?"


If you have an older computer then it may not be your ram or hardware. It is possible that it is just more system resources are in use.

quoted from the following link
Quote: "Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs). "


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314056
You definitly want to view the Microsoft link if you need to determine what DLLs are running on svchost.exe.
Because as the following site mentions.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/svchost/

Quote: "The file svchost.exe is the Generic Host Process for Win32 Services used for administering 16-bit-based dynamically linked library files (DLL files) including other supplementary support applications."


Quote: "
Note: svchost.exe is a process registered as a backdoor vulnerability which may be installed for malicious purposes by an attacker allowing access to your computer from remote locations, stealing passwords, Internet banking and personal data. If unaccounted for, this process should be removed immediately.

Note: svchost.exe is a process which is registered as a trojan. This Trojan allows attackers to access your computer from remote locations, stealing passwords, Internet banking and personal data. This process is a security risk and should be removed from your system.

Note: svchost.exe is a process belonging to Microsoft Service Host Process. This could also be a stealth monitoring software that sits in the background and tracks all activities such as keyboard input (including websites visited, passwords etc.) This information can be sent to third parties through email or ftp uploads. If you did not intentionally install this program make sure you remove it to protect your privacy.

Determining whether svchost.exe is a virus or a legitimate Windows process depends on the directory location it executes or runs from.
We strongly recommend that you run a FREE registry scan to identify svchost.exe related errors.
"



Marx Brothers and Dark Basic Professional Forever
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mamaji4
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2009 13:45 Edited at: 3rd Apr 2009 23:35
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Also you should check if all the processes are svchost.exe
There is a sly trojan that appears as scvhost.exe

Notice that it is very easy to mistake the 'scv' for 'svc'
And scvhost.exe is definitely a trojan, so you should get it out as soon as possible.

And yeah. Marx Brothers forever. They were the originals. Groucho was my favourite. With his 'Thank yows'.
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