Windows 10 low memory warning followed by graphics driver crash

[ahobel1995]

Hi there! Ive used Tons Hardware for a while to fix certain issues with my PC, but this new problem I have seems to be thwarting even my best attempts.

To start my PC specs are as follows:

MSI X99S
EVGA NVIDIA Geforce GTX 980oc
Intel i7 5820k 6-core processor overclocked to 4.0GHz
24 GB of DDR4 RAM
750 Watt power supply
500 GB SSD
3 TB HDD


So obviously my PC is a bit overbuilt, I bought it that way almost 2 years ago and never had many problems until about 3 weeks ago.

Im currently in the USAF and my PC was in storage for about 2 months until I got it back. After getting it set up and updated properly, I noticed that after an hour or two windows would flash a low memory warning and subsequently freeze.

I attempted to solve the memory leak issue by by rearranging my page filing in hopes that would accomodate. It didnt work. I updated my graphics driver twice now trying to see why it would crash as well. Nothing fixed it.

Im not entirely sure what my problem is. I ran whocrashed to identify the problem within a memory dump. It showed ntoskrnl.exe as being the root cause for the system exception error that was reported post crash. From my reading, it seemed that was tied to the runtime broker, and to limit it from leaking memory, I found a few setting to disable. That didnt work.

At this point I resest my PC from the Anniversary Update back to oroginal Windows 10. That didnt work either.

Of course with the reset back, I reran some of my other possible solution in the event they were reset. Still didnt work.

Ive tried a lot of solves, bith on youtube and on this forum, but nothing is solving it.


It usually identifies Firefox or google chrome as the program that needs shut down during the low memory warning. Subsequently my graphics driver will crash, and my PC will freeze. All I can do from there is hard boot it and try again.

Can anyone help me? Im at a near complete loss here. I dont want to refresh my PC as I do a lot of youtube and I have quite a few third party recording softwares installed. Ive never had problems with them before, so Im almost positive they arent the issue. They have all been updated as well to potentially solve the problem. My PC will generally crash even if only one internet browser window is open with my core temp program as well. It just doesnt make sense to me.

All help will be appreciated! Also if you want the memory.dmp, I accidentally erased it while using CCleaner to try and remove the problem.

 

[Colif]

So is page file managed by windows?

seems impossible a machine with 24gb of ram can get out of memory errors but I have read about it before that it can happen. You are more proof

can you download https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx - its an op version of task manager and should help you work out whats using all your ram

this explains the program: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson2/
this shows how to use it to identify problems: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson3/

Private ram is ram program is actually using, I think you likely to need to look at Working set as that is the amount of ram promised to that process and it might be where your problem lies as something is asking for more ram than your PC can deliver.

 

[ahobel1995]

So is page file managed by windows?

seems impossible a machine with 24gb of ram can get out of memory errors but I have read about it before that it can happen. You are more proof

can you download https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx - its an op version of task manager and should help you work out whats using all your ram

this explains the program: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson2/
this shows how to use it to identify problems: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson3/

Private ram is ram program is actually using, I think you likely to need to look at Working set as that is the amount of ram promised to that process and it might be where your problem lies as something is asking for more ram than your PC can deliver.

Thanks Colif! Yeah, while it's crashing it normally still reads at about 3 GB used of 24 GB RAM. I know for a fact just on that its a memory leak somewhere. I'll give your solution a shot!

Also yes, my page filing is managed by windows. I have my 24 GB of RAM, and then 48 GB of filing to my main drive.

 

[ahobel1995]

So is page file managed by windows?

seems impossible a machine with 24gb of ram can get out of memory errors but I have read about it before that it can happen. You are more proof

can you download https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx - its an op version of task manager and should help you work out whats using all your ram

this explains the program: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson2/
this shows how to use it to identify problems: http://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson3/

Private ram is ram program is actually using, I think you likely to need to look at Working set as that is the amount of ram promised to that process and it might be where your problem lies as something is asking for more ram than your PC can deliver.

Okay, so after delving into the program, I think I've found the issue. I have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and as it idles it takes up 334 MB of ram in the private set, while the working set is only 240 MB. With it though is Microsoft's own anti-malware which is taking 133 MB in the private set while the working set is at 124 MB. From my understanding of digging a little deeper, is that every 2 hours Microsoft's anti-malware starts a scan which takes up even more RAM. That coupled with the Malwarebytes causes it to freeze and suspend itself along with the Windows Experience Shell which subsequently causes the whole PC to freeze and crash. I don't really know how to fix this because Malwarebytes is one of my favorite programs to use because of its efficiency and power, but there isn't a way to shut off Windows Defender from performing an anti-malware scan every 2 hours. Even if I did uninstall Malwarebytes and cancel my subscription, anti-malware would still scan and over power its private set furthering the gap between the private set and working set. I'm just not entirely sure how to fix this problem.

 

[Colif]

Use another AV like bitdefender free as it won't scan PC every 2 hours. if you buy the paid version you can set it to scan whenever you want it to, not whenever it feels like doing it.

You can't turn defender off any other way, it only runs if you don't have a better choice.

 

[ahobel1995]

Use another AV like bitdefender free as it won't scan PC every 2 hours. if you buy the paid version you can set it to scan whenever you want it to, not whenever it feels like doing it.

You can't turn defender off any other way, it only runs if you don't have a better choice.

So I have seemingly found the problem. My computer just faulted with the low memory warning which crashed the shell experience host. I found that it coincided with the malware scan which was identified by a 250% increased ram usage. The working set rose with it, so the private set was actually lower that the working set. MBAM on the otherhand is the culprit. I found that it apparently was infected by a malware within itself that disabled it from being updated. It caused the program to use way to much ram and crash the pc. I simply deactivated my license and uninstalled. With your advisement I've downloaded bitdefender and installed it. I'll see how the pc runs now without mbam running. Thank you so much for the help! I will update in a few hours as to whether or not it worked.

 

[ahobel1995]

Okay, so my computer finally crashed again. It was reading 3 GB of physical memory, but 99.5% usge of page filing. Something is holding a shte ton of page filing which crashes the whole computer. It was almost 80 GB of paging filed. I have no idea what was using it either because that doesnt factor in to the private or working set. I have no idea what the problem is still.

 

[Colif]

its commitments, and a memory leak of some sort. Something is asking for heaps of virtual memory and not giving it back when it doesn't use it or when it closes.

Windows does not actually have an error message for running out of RAM. What you're running out of is "commit limit".

The "System" graph in that version of Process Explorer is poorly named. It should be labeled "commit charge". (In the version I have it's called "System commit". Better, but still not completely consistent.) In any case the "current" height of the graph there is what shows lower down in the text section as "Commit Charge" - "Current", and the max height of the graph represents "Commit Charge" - "Limit".

"Commit charge" refers to virtual address space that is backed by the pagefile (if you have one) - in other words, if it can't all fit in RAM, the remainder goes in the pagefile. (There are other types of v.a.s. that are either backed by other files - that's called "mapped" v.a.s. - or that must stay in RAM all the time; the latter is called "nonpageable".) The "commit limit" is the maximum that the "commit charge" can be. It is equal to your RAM size plus the pagefile size.

This has nothing directly to do with how much RAM is free or available. Yes, you have about 4.5 GB RAM available. That doesn't mean you can exceed the commit limit. Committed memory does not necessarily use RAM and is not limited by the amount of available RAM.

http://superuser.com/questions/943175/windows-says-ram-ran-out-while-there-is-still-4-gb-of-physical-memory-available

Did you do an AV scan after installing bitdefender? thinking it might be a virus but it might also be a badly written driver. I saw a video a while ago about ram and all this stuff but i can't seem to find it now.

I think you need to use poolmon: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/177415

Poolmon overview

hard part is finding an easy guide for it - this is a bit old but basics are still the same: https://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/general/troubleshooting-nonpaged-and-paged-pool-errors-in-windows/

 

[Colif]

But then I read this and look at the links to the actual software they suggest and it all costs too much: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1984186/what-is-private-bytes-virtual-bytes-working-set

I found the videos but they rather long.

 

[ahobel1995]

I finally fixed the problem. It was an outdated driver that I had overlooked. I have an Oculus Rift DK2 and the driver I was using was outdated. As its server was communicating, it was outdated. So as a result a memory leak was created. The minute I uninstalled it to reinstall the new one, the my system commit size for page filing dropped from an earth shatter 60GB to 3.5GB. The solution for those of you wondering is probably in your drivers. Just update everything.

 

[Colif]

lol. i just asked for more help as I was getting out of my depth

Glad you fixed it