Smart Ram slowly eats up the pagefile

[Nemelis]

Hi,

 

First off all, I like the ASC toolset. Especially Smart Ram, which - until recently - I have always running in the background.

But since 2 or 3 updates of ASC I noticed something strange: Some process was slowly but certainly filling up my pagefile on both my laptops (one personal and one which is owned by my company).

 

I found the culprit, since my personal laptop started to get page-file problems (it has a dedicated pagefile partition of 4 GB on my harddisk, which was completely filled). So I started closing applications, starting with the ones which had a high VM size in window task manager: e.g. firefox.

Nothing helped, until I decided to reboot my laptop (normally I leave my laptops on all the time, due to some processes). And lo and behold, right after I saw that Smart Ram was closed down I saw the "page file usage history" graph in the performance section of task manager drop to almost zero.

 

Since that does not proof anything I decided to take a look on my companies laptop and saw that there the page file already took up 6 GB (that laptop does not have a dedicated pagefile). So I decided to kill Smart Ram and directly the page file usage dropped to 500 MB.

 

Note: According to the process overview of Task Manager the task "Sup_SmartRam.exe" (the one task I know is a Smart Ram task :wink:) did not have a huge VM Size. Actually a svchost.exe task had the largest VM size (about 100 Mb)

 

At that time I still had ASC (free) 3.6.0, so I upgraded to 3.6.1, but I still see this problem.

 

Systems:

Both laptops are running Windows XP Pro SP3 (my home laptop has also all latest upgrades).

My home laptop has 4 GB memory (Don't know how much my work-laptop has).

Other malware-scanners:

Both laptops also run Spybot as scheduled task. My worklaptop has Spybot TeaTimer running as well.

Virus scanners:

Home: Norton 360

Work: Trend Micro Officescan / Smart Scan

 

Hope you can do something about this.

 

TIA.

 

Nemelis

[enoskype]

Hi Nemelis,

 

SmartRAM is designed to free up unused memory in your RAM, and when the RAM is freed, that information is written to pagefile.

So, it is normal that the pagefile will be filled if it is defined as a static size, and will get bigger in size (and most probably fragmented) if it is adjusted by the OS.

 

Of course, if the PC/laptop is left running for a long time, the result will be that the pagefile will be filled at the end, or will get bigger and bigger.

 

That's why some of the optimizers and Windows offer emptying of pagefile in next restart or all restars of Windows.

 

My advice will be to restart Windows in both of your laptops and/or close SmartRAM and start it again, once in a while.

 

Cheers.

[DonnyD]

Hi Nemelis,

 

SmartRAM is designed to free up unused memory in your RAM, and when the RAM is freed, that information is written to pagefile.

So, it is normal that the pagefile will be filled if it is defined as a static size, and will get bigger in size (and most probably fragmented) if it is adjusted by the OS.

 

Of course, if the PC/laptop is left running for a long time, the result will be that the pagefile will be filled at the end, or will get bigger and bigger.

 

That's why some of the optimizers and Windows offer emptying of pagefile in next restart or all restars of Windows.

 

My advice will be to restart Windows in both of your laptops and/or close SmartRAM and start it again, once in a while.

 

Cheers.

Why is the information written to the pagefile? Why not write it to a log file... It makes no sense in the process to clean up real memory only to increase the size of the pagefile.

[enoskype]

Hi DonnyD,

 

I think it is my mistake to define what is written to pagefile as information, it is misleading.

 

I should have said, whatever written in the RAM, instead of information. So, it is not an information which can be written in a text (log) file.

 

Windows behaves exactly the same when there is not enough RAM (Random Access Memory) is left for the next process when it is called.

 

The purpose of SmartRAM is to ready the PC (availabe RAM) for the next process even before that process is called for.

 

Cheers.

[itobe]

Investigation

 

Dear Nemelis,

 

We are very sorry for the inconvenient and thank you for your kindly feedback.

 

For further investigation, we need your help. Tons of thanks in advance.

 

Since that does not proof anything I decided to take a look on my companies laptop and saw that there the page file already took up 6 GB (that laptop does not have a dedicated pagefile).

So I decided to kill Smart Ram and directly the page file usage dropped to 500 MB.

 

Please provide us some more detail information:

 

1) How long it took until the page file up to 6GB?

 

2) What other programs run meanwhile?

 

3) Please attach some screenshot when the issue occurs:

a. Main user interface of Smart Ram.

b. Performance tab of Windows Task Manager.

c. Processes tab with "VM Size Columns" of Windows Task Manager.

 

FYI, we attached some screenshot.

 

Thanks again friend and we will solve it ASAP.

 

Cheers.

[detailer]

By Design

 

I agree with Enoskype here.I'm no expert,but I use Anvir Task Manager which has an option to "free memory" from individual processes.Unlike SR,it doesn't push CPU to max to achieve this.It does,however move that "demand" directly to the page file.Memory usage goes down,but page file content goes up.Perhaps this is just how it is accomplished.

[enoskype]

Hi all,

wozofoz reminded me CleanMem, a program using MS's Windows API EmptyWorkingSet of which only removes memory no longer being used by the process. So, the freed memory is not written to the pagefile.

 

As far as I know, it works a bit different than SmartRAM. IObit may have a better definition information though.

 

Cheers.

[Nemelis]

Dear Nemelis,

Please provide us some more detail information:

 

1) How long it took until the page file up to 6GB?

I don't know by heart how long it was running.

 

I will start Smart Ram on my home laptop to see how long it takes there to fill the partition of 4 GB.

 

2) What other programs run meanwhile?

On my work-laptop usually:

* Firefox (with a number of windows open and in each window a number of tabs). This is normally the biggest memory-user

* Excel

* Outlook (only at work)

* Notepad ++ with 3 windows open (and a number of files open in each window)

* Citrix-farm session so I can log on at the client we are creating programs for

* Word

 

My home laptop:

* Firefox (2 windows open, with a number of tabs). Also here most of the time the biggest memory consumer

* Thunderbird

* Explorer

* Taskmanager

* And sometimes games (LOTRO, takes up a lot of memory), word or excel.

* And sometimes 1 or 2 folding@home sessions which also might take up a lot of memory (but I close those always when I start doing something of which I know that a lot of memory and processing power is needed).

 

3) Please attach some screenshot when the issue occurs:

a. Main user interface of Smart Ram.

b. Performance tab of Windows Task Manager.

c. Processes tab with "VM Size Columns" of Windows Task Manager.

Will do when my home-laptop again shows the problem.

[itobe]

Look forward your reply.

 

Will do when my home-laptop again shows the problem.

 

That's Ok. Thank you in advance.

 

Cheers

[Nemelis]

I started Smart Ram on my home laptop at july 9th, today (july 15th) 2 programs (firefox and the game Lotro) crashed due to lack of memory when I tried to start Lotro.

When I started Smart Ram at the 9th, memory usage was around 700 Mb

 

The Page File Usage History before closing Smart Ram today shows 4.32 GB (see picture 1 ) (Note I shrank this picture before seeing that the forum software uses different allowed sizes for *.jpeg (19.5 Kb) and *.jpg (1000 Kb) files).

 

The VM size of Smart Ram before closing it was 44.400 K (see picture 2 )

 

Smart Ram main UI says that still 501 MB out of 4945 MB should be free (after the crash of firefox and Lotro). (see picture 3)

 

After closing Smart Ram the Page File Usage shrank to 883 Mb (see picture 4)

 

Hope this is any help for you.

[itobe]

Nemelis

 

Dear Nemelis,

 

Thank you for your time and detailed information.

 

We will try our best to solve this issue ASAP.

 

Cheers.

[wouldrichest]

Smart Ram slowly eats up the pagefile

 

That's Ok. Thank you in advance.

 

Cheers

 

I started Smart Ram on my home laptop at july 9th, today (july 15th) 2 programs (firefox and the game Lotro) crashed due to lack of memory when I tried to start Lotro.

When I started Smart Ram at the 9th, memory usage was around 700 Mb

 

The Page File Usage History before closing Smart Ram today shows 4.32 GB (see picture 1 ) (Note I shrank this picture before seeing that the forum software uses different allowed sizes for *.jpeg (19.5 Kb) and *.jpg (1000 Kb) files).

 

The VM size of Smart Ram before closing it was 44.400 K (see picture 2 )

 

Smart Ram main UI says that still 501 MB out of 4945 MB should be free (after the crash of firefox and Lotro). (see picture 3)

 

After closing Smart Ram the Page File Usage shrank to 883 Mb (see picture 4)

 

EDIT: Signature spammer_banned

[enoskype]

And you have eaten up yourself.:evil:

[Nemelis]

Nice how some people always try to hyjack serious posts <sigh>.

I already was confused by his post when seeing the update-mail, not seeing what was different from my last post (I normally don't look at sigs and the update-mail also does not show them).