Windows is low on Memory

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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So, I left my PC running and when I came back around an hour later, Windows Said I was running low on memory, and I had to shutdown my programs.

I have a Windows Pagefile of 4096MB, and I have 8096MB of ram.

I checked Windows Logs, and I found a Warning associated with the event, however I doesn't make sense

"Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition. The following programs consumed the most virtual memory: svchost.exe (1036) consumed 245542912 bytes, Steam.exe (3584) consumed 203694080 bytes, and MsMpEng.exe (364) consumed 76865536 bytes."

Using a calculator, I found it was no more than 400-500MB of ram being used.



Also, I found this other warning, saying
"Name resolution for the name computersourcemag.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded."

I don't know this website, and I never searched for it.

I also found another one for a ex-yupress.com. What are these?

 
Solution
Right Click My Computer, Go to -> Advance Tab -> Performance Settings
-> Advanced -> virtual Memory -> Click .-> Change -> Then you can set to custom for the memory allocation of your desire.. :)
hope it works..
then choose me as your solution. :)

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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Hi, I'm running scans and it doesn't show anything. Is there a way I could "flush" my pagefile? I may also note that I had a program called Nvidia Experience, and it had crashed another program while I was gone, and I don't know if that would make much difference.

As for the websites, are those websites for like ads? since they kind of seem relevant to what I was searching at the time.
 
From searches for computersourcemag and ex-yupress, computersourcemag doesn't seem to be a real website, at least my browser did not open it.. (same as your DNS servers not responding) all it got browsing directly to the website sent me to informative pages about it.

And ex-yupress seems to be a yugoslavian press website which doesn't seem to pose a threat since my antivirus gives out warnings when it catches malicious code from websites.

So, none of the websites seems to be a particularly malicious, but whatever took your there (msmpeng.exe or steam.exe) can be so if it later takes your browser to some other website that turns out worse. So, disable the programs associated with those two processes and scan with the antivirus and Malware Bytes... check below.

Svchost.exe is the Windows Service host and can consume high system resources sometimes but with 526MB of RAM being used it was not doing anything out of the ordinary... so you either got a false warning or the memory usage spiked at some point when you were away from the computer.
It may also been caused by having half the virtual memory of the installed RAM, so set your virtual RAM to System Managed and it will set it to around 8192MB or at least set it manually to any number above your installed RAM.

1. You need to disable startup programs (Start > type: msconfig > Enter > Startup tab, uncheck all except the anativirus)
2. Scan with Malwarebytes Antimalware... if necessary follow with the antivirus.
3. Restart and if the problem still persists, disable System Restore and repeat scans.
4. Increase your Virtual Ram: Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Advanced > Change > Sytsem Managed.
Note: To flush the Paging File you can choose No Paging File > Set > OK, and restart... and then set it to System Managed or manually as suggested above.

computersourcemag.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/computersourcemag.com

ex-yupress.com
http://dig.do/ex-yupress.com

What is Msmpeng.exe and How to Remove It
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-vista-tips/what-is-msmpeng-exe/
http://www.processlibrary.com/en/directory/files/msmpeng/27074/

What is Steam.exe? Is Steam.exe spyware or a virus?
http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/steam.exe.html

Steam.exe
http://www.2-spyware.com/file-steam-exe.html
http://www.processlibrary.com/en/directory/files/msmpeng/27074/
 

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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I have done a full scan of Mbam, with root kits enabled, and nothing found.

Would the yugoslavian website be on the DNS error since I was on wikipeida looking up stuff about their history? this is irrelevant but I saw on the news about the Bosnian floods and how all the landmines are being unearthed.

Could it have been an ad page that failed to load? also, I have lots of the DNS errors, but most seem to be just ads.

The Msmpeng is part of MSE, and Steam is a very well known program for distributing games, its the number 1 on the market, and have used it for years.

Would it be possible if you could view your own event log and see if you have similar issues with websites appearing?

I was on tomshardware 5 minutes before event logs recorded the error, so I'm thinking it has something to with that, I'm not sure.


"when you were away from the computer. " I may also note that when I was away Steam Crashed. There is apparently an issue going around that geforce experience (A Driver managing program distributed by Nvidia) is causing problems with steam, and I'm thinking when it crashed it could have had a memory leak (I'm not 100% about memory leaks, but I've heard they cause RAM issues)

But if my scan doesn't pick up anything, can I be 100% sure my system isn't compromised? If there is a problem, the first one I want make sure is fixed is malware, as I am particularly worried about malware.
 
Malwarebytes having found nothing doesn't mean nothing is there, the problems you're having seems to indicate something is!.. particularly an Adware that may not be detected as particularly malicious but they are still undesireable.

No antivirus or antimalware is a 100% effective... years back the notion that security applications were only arond 80% effective because of reasons like they not having deffinitions up to date on the latest released bugs.. other reasons could be due to malware attacking the very same security programs, and maybe corrupting their deffinitions, this would probably be the simplest way of programming malware to avoid detection.

The yugoslavian website on the DNS error seems like a distinct possibility, If you check the Internet Options > Privacy on cookies you will see that third party cookies are an obvious possibility... this party cookies are from websites you never accessed. So that seems to be what your DNS error indicates. Possible solution can be a "custom Hosts file" you can download one from different websites, just type that on your browser for details and downloads.

The Msmpeng: is part of MSE, and so is Alexa, which was (or is) also detected as adware.. so them being genuine MS doesn't mean they are desireable or perfectly safe or even invulnerable to infection and takeover. Besides Microsoft has been accused of including spyware in the Windows Updates.

Steam and games: I have always considered Gaming websites to be a viable route of infection. In the past I noticed that games websites were one of the riskier type of websites... children computers are usually infected because of their browsing habbits, and from children to adult games there isn't much difference.

No I don't have similar website issues... whenever such a problem appears I can usually recognize their activity and solve such issues. In my case it's happened whenever I got careless when installing applications as they usually install extra applications if you don't carefully watch the installation process. You have to always select the Custom installation as opposed to the default installation so you can uncheck undesireable adware or malicious software installation.

On Tom's Hardware: I believe the main purpose of adware is to record the user browsing habbits and send relative data home... so my guess is, whatever adware is in your computer, it reacted to Toms Webiste possibly due to the type of assistance the forum provides, and this reaction may be what the Event log recorded.

I don't know much about Nvidia issues or their relation to steam or memory leaks, but it sounds obvious to me that any of the Power Options, Hibenation, Sleep Mode or simple standby must have an influence on video (specially noticeable when you can't awake the computer from sleep mode), so Nvidia drivers and the driver manager issues may be traced to Power Options, and the steam.exe crash may be a consequence of this. If you consider that any of the Power Options saves data to the RAM modules, and this in turn can have influence on video and video drivers, you can conclude that there may be some relation between your absense, sleep mode, and the whole problem... not considering a coincidence with adware issues.

I would suggest you delete temp files and system junk, disable startup programs, disable System Restore, clean the registry, etc. and then do more virus and malware scans.. including a HijackThis scan. Check the thread on usefull tips in cleaning any computer from residual files, bugware and more, to improve security and performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1863469/slow.html
 

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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Hi, thanks for the detailed answer. My pcs performance is fine, in mever get ads and my accounts aren't being altered.

Steam does not pose a threat in a malicious way, if it millions would be infected daily.
I may note that alexa says the computer source mag site is linked by 45 sites, including microsoft. Also I dont get 100s of warnings per day, lots of 99% of websites dont show anything.

Im worried of infections but Ive seen others get the same messages on the same sites, and I dont download alot of installers. I see dns errors for things like sy-timg (something like that) further in history which is ad website usually on YouTube.

I read a thread where it sqid even hypertexts or images can trigger tge browser to make a connection, and it could have result ed in errors.

 
I did say adware are not particularly malicious (and they are easy to remove) so just configure Cookie management in Internet Options to stop third party cookies to prevent pop-ups and alike, since these and program installations seem the most likely sources for adware, also do regular virus and malware scans and stop worrying. Also you don't need to download many installers since almlost every installer has something included so you have to watch how you install any time you do.
 

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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But how can I be sure its adware? I dont ad pop ups or anything, and ive seen similar posts with similar sites.

If my av cant detect it, how can I get rid of it if its actually there?
 

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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So I just came back home, and I thought I'd clear a few things:

Steam and MsMpeng are not malicious, they just came up on the event logs, but I had found the DNS errors when I had been looking for the memory error.

I just cleared my cookies from the Internet Options, not on my actual browser, and coming onto this site hasn't given A DNS warning.

I get a DNS warning from this site http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/148464-quot-Random-quot-DNS-Client-Events-Warnigs-in-Administrative-Events-logs

Which is a post on the same topic., and it came on another computer in the house, however www.computersourcemag.com did not.
Since clearing my cookies seemd to have done the trick, does it mean that it could have been a corrupted cookie for this site?
 

supasieu

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Mar 10, 2014
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Try to run some other beside Malwarebytes and mbr, here are some suggestion:
- Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10
tools from bleepingcomputer.com
- adwcleaner
- combofix
- hitmanpro 32/64 bit
- rkill
- adware-removal-tool from techsupportall.com
- superantispyware
- spybot
- ccleaner from periform.com > go to Tools > Startup > Windows: clean up your startup

hope it helps,
 

Keyes

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Aug 22, 2013
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Would it be possible that if I have a preload feature on my chrome, that it is causing these dns errors to come up? While im scanning, is there any non malware explanations? Btw the memory issue is seperate to the dns issue
 

Malicious cookies can cause that type of problems, so apparently that was it.. I don't mean windowssecrets.com cookies but others that may have reacted to the text that coincides with the event log. The thread at windowssecrets has good advice and so have others given you here, so do everything that's been suggested for the problem, IF it persists... and bookmark this thread for later use, if/when necessary.
 

ariel_bals

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Jun 1, 2014
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Right Click My Computer, Go to -> Advance Tab -> Performance Settings
-> Advanced -> virtual Memory -> Click .-> Change -> Then you can set to custom for the memory allocation of your desire.. :)
hope it works..
then choose me as your solution. :)
 
Solution