Explorer in Win98 causing memory probs

[Bowler]

I've tried this one on USENET (both general win98 group and on Microsoft's servers), but no one seems to have an idea about it. Let's see if my luck is any better here.

Symptoms:
Open Windows Explorer (explorer.exe), and just browse around. Launch documents, media files, let Explorer generate previews of image files, etc. After a bit (say 3 or 4 minutes of consistently opening files), Explorer returns a "not enough memory" message. From that point on, no more programs can be launched and image previews won't be generated. Each attempt to launch a program of any type leads to a "not enough memory" message, despite the fact that the system monitor reports a tremendous amount of physical memory available for allocation.

The only way to temporarily alleviate the problem is to CTRL-ALT-DEL to the task manager, select "End Task" on Explorer, cancel out of the subsequent "Shutdown/Restart" dialog box and wait for the "End Task" pop-up. Click "End Task" to bring Explorer down and, since it's the shell, it relaunches on its own. It's just a temporary fix, though, since opening Explorer again produces the same results again, just in less time.

I'd say "Hey, this is a memory leak", but I seem to feel that if this were a memory leak, more people would be experiencing it. So far, I've only been able to track down one person who has had the same symptoms. Unfortunately, he was running Win95 and the year was 1997. He has long since upgraded to Win98 (and then again to Win2k).

Here's a quick run down of the integral components of my system:

Abit VT6X4 motherboard
Pentium III 800 (not OC'd)
640 MB PC100 RAM (512 in one stick, 128 in the other)
13 GB hard drive (Western Digital, I think)
Toshiba DVD-ROM drive (don't have the model # on hand)

Boston Acoustic Speakers, Gateway Ev700 monitor, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, blah, blah. Pretty generic crap.

Just for the sake of adding the following:

I'm running as little as possible in the background. No RealPlayer, IM or anything else.

I've already adjusted the system.ini file's File Cache setting as per Microsoft's article on Win98 PC's having issues with large RAM amounts. Problem persists. And besides, I had the problem before I put in the 512 MB stick anyway. :disgust:

Thanks a lot, guys. I really just hope someone else has had this problem and I'm not going insane.

 

[WarCon]

My guess would be its caching all the thumbnails and this is the source of your problem. Try doing it with thumbnail view disabled and see. I don't know why it would cause such an obvious leak, but you have to remember one thing. It is a Microsoft platform and that means there are bugs..........

One small question, do you have any extremely large jpg's? I mean like the actual size of the jpg is several megs. I have found too large of jpg's create major memory related crashes when doing things with them. I think its to do with the fact that the thumbnail is produced by reading the jpg first (which means opening it all the way).

I have always been disappointed with windows inability to free up available memory, it seems to hold on to memory resident copies of program files even after the program has been closed for a long time and I feel this to be unacceptable.

Good luck.......

 

[Bowler]

Well, the image files are mostly less than 100k. But the problem occurs even when I'm not dealing with images. I stored most of my media files in a common directory. If all I did was double-click the same MPG file over and over (subsequently closing Windows Media Player each time so that only one instance is open at a time), I'd still wind up with "not enough memory" after a couple of minutes of launches.

Thanks for the advice, though.

 

[ddeder]

Disable your startup items (by doing a selective startup) in msconfig and see if it still happens to see if it might be something running in the background causing the problem.

Also, does it happen in Safe Mode?

 

[Bowler]

Ooo...hadn't tried it in Safe Mode. Give me a bit and I'll let you know.

Not much loading in startup as it is.:
Registry Scan
System Tray
EN4060P (firmware for my USB ADSL modem)
TweakUI (of course )
Lexmark's Printer crap
ICONFIG (whatever that is...I'll look it up)
Tiny Personal Firewall

Haven't a clue if the problem happens without the firmware load. It did happen before I got the Lexmark printer, so I'll assume that has nothing to do with the problem.

Oh, and my Startup folder is empty, so nothing there.

 

[sandorski]

Try using Cacheman for memory management. Do a search at CNet for it.