8GB Ram Win7 why low mem warning at 5.5GB?

[Morbus]

Forget the age file, what you should disable is the freaking low memory warning. All my windows installs have it disabled, it's about as useless and counter-producive as it could ever be...

 

[code65536]

Oh man I hate it when people say a problem does not exist because it does not happen to them.

Hence the following words in my post, "I remain highly skeptical."

I'm not saying the problem does not exist, period. I'm saying that because 1) I have not seen evidence for it and 2) its existence is not predicted by theory and would contradict the defined behavior of Windows memory management, I am highly skeptical of these claims.

If you told me, "running an EXE file from a spam e-mail will probably hose your computer", I will believe you even though I've personally never tried it, because it fits well-known expectations of what what spammers do. But this is different because, as I said earlier, applications have absolutely no access to the page file and is blind to what can get paged out (well, okay, they can mark a page they own as please-do-not-page-this-out), so this would be like someone telling me, "running a signed EXE file from a trusted source will hose your computer"--I haven't experienced it, and I would be right to doubt such a claim and to ask the questions, "Are you really sure it was signed?" and "Are you really sure it was a trusted source and not something that just looked like a trusted source?"

And as I said earlier in the thread, if someone can post a screenshot of a pagefile-related error in which there isn't genuinely high memory demand, I'd love to see it--show me the evidence, and I'll sing a different tune. I want to see the exact error in question and also see evidence suggesting that it's the result of the page file not existing and not the result of some other cause.

 

[soccerballtux]

Forget the age file, what you should disable is the freaking low memory warning. All my windows installs have it disabled, it's about as useless and counter-producive as it could ever be...

Didn't know there was such a setting. Thanks. http://superuser.com/questions/698358/crysis-on-windows-8-1-triggers-low-memory-warning

 

[soccerballtux]

Hence the following words in my post, "I remain highly skeptical."

I'm not saying the problem does not exist, period. I'm saying that because 1) I have not seen evidence for it and 2) its existence is not predicted by theory and would contradict the defined behavior of Windows memory management, I am highly skeptical of these claims.

If you told me, "running an EXE file from a spam e-mail will probably hose your computer", I will believe you even though I've personally never tried it, because it fits well-known expectations of what what spammers do. But this is different because, as I said earlier, applications have absolutely no access to the page file and is blind to what can get paged out (well, okay, they can mark a page they own as please-do-not-page-this-out), so this would be like someone telling me, "running a signed EXE file from a trusted source will hose your computer"--I haven't experienced it, and I would be right to doubt such a claim and to ask the questions, "Are you really sure it was signed?" and "Are you really sure it was a trusted source and not something that just looked like a trusted source?"

And as I said earlier in the thread, if someone can post a screenshot of a pagefile-related error in which there isn't genuinely high memory demand, I'd love to see it--show me the evidence, and I'll sing a different tune. I want to see the exact error in question and also see evidence suggesting that it's the result of the page file not existing and not the result of some other cause.

I'm with you. It's virtual memory because the program can't tell a difference. All memory is virtual, just some is "not hard drive"

 

[BonzaiDuck]

There is a setting when running msconfig > Boot > Advanced options
where you can limit max memory and number of processors
-maybe it's checked?

Funny. I just started and concluded a short thread, ending with the discovery of that very same MSCONFIG Tab.

I'd be curious to see what the OP discovers there.

As to "swapfile" management . . . I've let Magician advise my choices for the Swapfile on my 840-Pro boot disk. With other systems, I let Windows do it.

Virtual Memory has a long history going back to early Windows. It's probably more "critical" for performance in RAM-limited situations, like my laptop system. What gains in performance and disk usage will mean much by reducing it by half? (Or what losses?) How does that compare to "Let Windows manage" virtual memory?

Imagine an unlikely scenario with a 60GB boot-system HDD paired with 32 GB of RAM. But how many folks sporting 32 GB of RAM are going to use a 60GB HDD boot disk?

 

[soccerballtux]

Funny. I just started and concluded a short thread, ending with the discovery of that very same MSCONFIG Tab.

I'd be curious to see what the OP discovers there.

As to "swapfile" management . . . I've let Magician advise my choices for the Swapfile on my 840-Pro boot disk. With other systems, I let Windows do it.

Virtual Memory has a long history going back to early Windows. It's probably more "critical" for performance in RAM-limited situations, like my laptop system. What gains in performance and disk usage will mean much by reducing it by half? (Or what losses?) How does that compare to "Let Windows manage" virtual memory?

Imagine an unlikely scenario with a 60GB boot-system HDD paired with 32 GB of RAM. But how many folks sporting 32 GB of RAM are going to use a 60GB HDD boot disk?

default is unconfigured, unchecked; which is what I had

...and I thought it only applied to boot routine

 

[alcoholbob]

If you try to play Dawn of War 2 without a pagefile or one under 200mb a popup opens telling you to increase your pagefile size otherwise the program wont start.

 

[jsalpha2]

I had the same problem, it turned out to be a bad graphics card. Look in Windows\Performance\WinSAT and see if all the clips will play. Had switched from a really old ATI card to an even older Nvidia card. Both ended up in the trash. Windows Experience Index would not even finish until I put in a newer card.

 

[soccerballtux]

hm, I've done the GPEdit things and checked the boot settings in msconfig; and set the swap to 400MB; have all 8 useable and I'm still getting programs-won't-start-problems at 6GB on the nose.

You know what, I have a 2GB 7870 video card.

I bet you they patched that 'feature' back in from Vista (which they originally removed) where it mirrors the video RAM to desktop RAM...wtf!

 

[soccerballtux]

well, I'm trying to replicate the problem now and I'm having issues.
replicating it.
hm.

edit: happened again, no more desktop composition till I log...