Out of memory error on Win7 64 with 6 Gb of RAM ??

[Daube]

Hi all,

Recently I have started getting out of memory error on my FSX Acceleration, installed on Win7 64 with 6 Gb of RAM. After a short flight over the PNW area, may it be with a complex plane like the A2A B-17 or a simpler plane like Piglet's Meyers 200, the performance of the sim would start to decrease quickly (after 3 minutes) and the popup indicating that the program is lacking free memory appears, asking me to shut it down...

What I do not understand is that in the task manager at that precise moment, FSX is using 2.15x.xxx kb of memory, and I have plenty left to use... Understanding that 64 bits OS do not need the /userva option anymore, I suppose I must have some sort of problem here...

I performed a search on the forums but most of the results are:
- dealing with 32 bits OS
- ending with a recommendation to increase the virtual memory (swap), which is totally disabled on my computer (I have 6 Gb of RAM, I don't need a slow file).

I'm investigating around the recent modifications I made in the tweaks of my FSX.cfg. Last week I had managed to make a flight almost 1 hour long landing in Bowerman with the B-17, today I can barely take off before the sim crashes...
I'm open to any suggestion.

[hae5904]

Did you got the latest updates for Win7?? I got one important update today for my 64bit system....and since then I get memory issues (no error messages so far....but looooong loading time of FSX......selecting aircraft etc)

Maybe you might set your system back to a date it all worked the way you liked it.

Cheers,
Hank

[timghetta]

you disabled your swap file/virtual memory?

That could be it, cause even with that much memory you still need a swap file for the OS to write too.

Also a 32 bit OS will not recognize anything higher then 3.25Gb of memory, just can not do the calculations, that is why the 64 OS is the king. Windows 7 has a decent kernel to manage memory.

[Daube]

My virtual memory is disabled since more than 4 years now, and there has never been any problems with that, not even an OOM error. Until today.
The Windows Update comment is interesting. I'll check with the system restore.

[Dangerousdave26]

Enable your swap file

Make it 2 x the memory installed.

Your system will not use the swap file for fSX while you are running it but there are a lot of other things it just might.

Remember that the swap file is where the OS sends applications it is not running at the current time but still needs to have handy for when it needs them.

Think of the running ram as the work bench and the swap file is the staging area of all of the parts you might need later.

also remember that FSX is not a 64 bit application. It still is subject to the 32 bit limitations regarding RAM. If with the swap file enabled there is something else going on with FSX or another application that is generating the OOM errors.

At that point I would start a flight in FSX with the task manager open and watch for memory consumption by processes. You may have a memory hog that is affecting your system negatively.

[Reddog]

Having the same oom thing with XP 32 bit when in The PNW scenery. not any where else.

[Dangerousdave26]

That is almost to be expected. XP 32 bit can only support 4 GB of RAM total and any one application can only use 2 GB of ram without using the /3GB switch.

That leaves you only 1 to 2 GB of ram for anything else running on your PC.

Even if you use the /3GB switch that only leaves 1 GB for other applications.

Under these conditions you might as well lt windows set the page file size as it is restricted in size when you have 4 physical GB of ram installed.

The limit on the page file size is like 490 MB when you have 4 GB of physical memory.

[Daube]

The swap file is not the solution.
I own this computer since one year now, and the swap file has been disabled since the beginning, to save my SSD drives. FSX Acceleration and PNW were installed from the start as well, and everything was running smooth until some days ago. So no, I'm not enabling the swap again.

I will continue my investigations to understand what has gone wrong. I have reverted my tweaks to their previous values already, but no joy. Next step is the system restore to last week.

[LouP]

Hey D.,

I just had this happen to me today in FS9. I decided to resurect my old FS9 install (it wasn't easy) so I could fall back on all my old stuff as a diversion from FSX once in a while. Anyway, I have 12 gig of RAM and 4 hard drives all over 1.5 tbs and don't understand how I could run out of memory. :isadizzy: I had a W7 update pushed out to me last night and am wondering if that had something to do with my issue today. I am finishing up with dfragging all my drives to make sure there is not an issue there.

LouP

[Daube]

Well, the fact is that FSX and FS9 are 32 bit applications.
So even if your system has a 64 bits OS with a lot of Gigabytes of memory on it, FSX or FS9 will only be able to use 3 Gigabytes of memory, more or less.

What is definitely strange is that I get an OOM message when FSX is said to use 2,3 to 2,5 Gb of memory only... it should be able to use more than that, normally...

Also I have noticed something with my last test: when I launch the flight in windowed mode, to keep an eye on the task manager (to monitor the memory usage of FSX.exe), the memory consumption raises to 1.8 - 2.0 Gb of RAM and stays within that limit. Sometimes it increases, sometimes it decreases, and it stays in that range. BUT if I switch to full screen for some seconds, then come back to windowed mode, then the memory consumption has jumped to 2.5 Gb and I get the error popup for lack of memory...

What the hell ?... I really have no idea about the logic of this problem...

[Hurricane91]

You might try rebuilding the Windows paging file.

"How to" instructions here;
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892610

If my PC had been running for a while, I was getting the out of memory warning when trying to start Golden Wings3, but FSX ran fine. I would have to re-boot to run GW.
Method 2 described in the link seems to have helped as I have not had the warning for the last two days.
Hope this helps.

[Daube]

What would a paging file bring exactely ?
In my situation, I have a total of 6 Gb of RAM with more than 50% free memory when FSX hangs and get the OOM error.... I fail to see what would the creation of a paging file bring new. A paging file was usefull when my PCs had very few memory, but now it's pretty much useless, isn't it ?

Also, I think I have found the killer, but I'm not sure yet. I have launched the sim and swithed back and forth to windowed/full screen several times. The amount of memory used by the sim was more or less stable. But then, I activated the ENB module... and at that moment, the switch to windowed or fullscreen mode started to increase drastically the amount of memory used by FSX.exe....

I'm using a very old version of the module which might not be optimized correctly. I'll have to try a newer version to check if the problem remains the same...

[Dangerousdave26]

Hey D.,

I just had this happen to me today in FS9. I decided to resurect my old FS9 install (it wasn't easy) so I could fall back on all my old stuff as a diversion from FSX once in a while. Anyway, I have 12 gig of RAM and 4 hard drives all over 1.5 tbs and don't understand how I could run out of memory. :isadizzy: I had a W7 update pushed out to me last night and am wondering if that had something to do with my issue today. I am finishing up with dfragging all my drives to make sure there is not an issue there.

LouP

Very strange Lou

What I would do is run windows task manager while running FS9 or FSX to see what is consuming memory.

[Dangerousdave26]

If you installed update KB2607712 today or possibly yesterday try removing that update.

All evening Cliffs of Dover has been CTD on me and I thought it was the update I did yesterday even though yesterday it ran like clockwork.

I removed that update that I installed today and it ran longer after than it has all evening.

I did not try FS9 or FSX before removing the update.

[LouP]

Isn't the target hard enough to hit and now they have to move it on us with these updates :mixedsmi:

Oh well lol

LouP

[hae5904]

If you installed update KB2607712 today or possibly yesterday try removing that update.

Yep that's the same update I mentioned previously that slows down my system.
Going to remove it as well.

Cheers,
Hank

[mal998]

This is going to sound odd, but the last time I had that warning, I discovered that I had somehow downloaded a huge video file that turned out to be 150gb. Once I discovered that file and deleted it, the problem was solved, never had it again.

I think I found the file in My Videos or Videos or one of those auto download files.

I know it sounds weird but we are dealing with Windows so check it out.

[ryanbatc]

The issue is not with your 6GB of memory, it's with your virtual memory. The virtual memory is becoming saturated. Go here, download process explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896653 and it will display how much virtual memory is used. You also need to subtract the physical GPU memory from 4GB of the total virtual memory available, which means usually around 3.5GB of vmem saturation you'll get an OOM. If the GPU isn't being used as much then around 4GB you'll get an OOM.

Addons like PNW, and high fidelity airplanes are creating these OOM's (EDIT**I know someone will jump on me here - I mean running big addons with high scenery settings will cause OOM's). Running custom edits like LOD 6.5 and high autogen settings in Orbx Land will ensure OOM's. I get them all the time because I run custom LOD edits but to fix the problem I've made three .cfg files - 1) Running lower sliders when in Orbx 2) Running much lower sliders for Orbx big cities 3) normal sliders for outside of Orbx Land.

Isn't it lame how we have these powerful PC's but now we have to turn down settings because of the old architecture lol?

[Daube]

Isn't it lame how we have these powerful PC's but now we have to turn down settings because of the old architecture lol?

Indeed.

[FlameOut]

...I discovered that I had somehow downloaded a huge video file ...

While I'm not experiencing OOM issues, I did go into my "videos" folder and sho 'nuff there was a 135 GB sitting in there...a Warbirdsim P-51 video that I had d/l a long time ago.
I had dwindled down my H.D. space to just a mere 24 GB left. I knew my FSX folder did not have that much stuff . I'm now back up to 155+ GB of free space.
Thanks for that little mention, it helped a lot Mal.

[Daube]

In the meanwhile, I performed more tests that confirmed the responsibity of the ENB Bloom in the OOM crashes.

Basically, as long as I fly without activating the bloom, everything is fine and I can fly as much as I want. But if I activate it, the amount of used memory starts growing dramatically and when it reaches 2.3 Gb, the sim performance crawls and the OOM popup comes... or the sim crashes directly.

I was using an old version of the ENB module, one of the old 0.74 versions for GTA San Andreas. I have replaced it by the 0.75 for Oblivion, and it works a bit better. The memory consumption still raises to critical amount, but as soon as I disable the bloom, the amount of used memory goes back to a normal level. So that's at least a temporary solution/workaround for me.

The real origin of the problem is still unknown though. The ENB 0.74 GTASA has been working fine for me since more than 3 years, and that's already 1 year on my new computer. This leads me to think that the problem might come from my new video drivers that I updated two weeks ago or something like that... I'll have to investigate more.

[mal998]

While I'm not experiencing OOM issues, I did go into my "videos" folder and sho 'nuff there was a 135 GB sitting in there...a Warbirdsim P-51 video that I had d/l a long time ago.
I had dwindled down my H.D. space to just a mere 24 GB left. I knew my FSX folder did not have that much stuff . I'm now back up to 155+ GB of free space.
Thanks for that little mention, it helped a lot Mal.

Glad it helped!

For "out of memory errors" have a look-see here: http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041.html scroll down a bit

Thanks to Nick N for his knowledge and assitance regarding all things FSX

[Daube]

Thanks for the link, I knew about Nick's stuff already, I've been using that for a long time.
Also:

x64 operating systems do not need the following changes