Out of Memory

This occurs after a fresh install of Windows and SL Windlight.

Im not doing anything. In game, I will be sat about chatting. No slow down, no juddering or warning. At random...completely at random...the game will stop with an out of memory error and I have to exit.

I have 4GB of ram on Vista Ultimate 64. UAC if off and its run as Admin. Vista is SP 1 and fully updated. This wasnt happening before my reinsall of the OS on a cleanly formatte drive. Can anyone help please?

I'm no wiz on this at all. But something changed with the format and reinstallation of Vista. It might be your page filing. I know how to get to that in XP but I don't with Vista (and I'm using Vista ..... LOL).

Also..........why the reformat and reinstallation of Vista? If I can be so forward to ask.

Vista is not as bad as everyone thinks or makes it out to be. Not one little bit infact.

I use Vista myself..............and I concur 100%

In fact once I got used to interface, I like it better than XP.

Second Life is a 32 bit application and is bound by the limits of the 32 bit memory space. That is, it can address an absolute maximum of 2GB RAM.

Second Life leaks memory. Badly.

Open Task Manager, set it to show the commit charge under the Processes tab, and watch SL creep up and up and up. You're probably getting the out of memory error around 1.8GB or 1.9GB usage, but it could be going as high as 2.0GB.

Regardless of the operating system or amount of physical RAM you have. until better garbage collection policies are put into place, SL will continue to crash (an alternative would be a bit of rework and compiling SL as a 64 bit executable, which would allow it to address, well, ungodly amounts of memory, and would eliminate your crashes, although then you'd have to deal with a several GB memory image).

tl;dr, SL is crashing because it's a 32 bit process and is using up all of it's addressable RAM.

I agree, I run SL on Vista. I did have Ultimate 64 and 32 installed. SL is a 32 bit programme and therefore suffers the 32 bit limitations including memory addressing.

The latest service pack for Vista has improved the network abilities, removing most of the double checking and slow downs.

Installing the latest version of .NET Framework can inprove the stability of SL as it is a OpenGL platform, which is supported by .NET Framework. This has many runtime libraries for the platform.

3.0 .NET Framework? the lastest.........

ok can anyone help the clueless here what is the .Net Framework?

I get the mem leak after a few hours in SL.
I am thinking this error is from the SL viewer, but I am willing to try anything on my end to help.

okay I have been reading about it on other sites.

So I will be checking this out for any possible solutions. Thanks

I have been having this problem when in areas with a lot of textures. I would over time run out of memory, and crash. Only recently did someone give me a suggestion that actually worked.

Under Hardware settings, in graphics options, lower the slider that shows how much memory your graphics card has. I am still not sure why it works, but it does. My card has 512 meg of memory, but i've slid the slider down to 256, and haven't had this issue since.

I used to have a programme that allowed you to alter the EXE and flag it as an application that could handle memory addresses of above 2gb. Anyone know what its called? I cant bring it to mind. And just to note...I was running SL on the exact same setup before I reinstalled windows without getting this problem.

I've asked or mentioned this several times now and I never get an answer. I use the main SL viewer 1.19. "whatever" most of the time (the RC's on occassion) and I've never had an out of memory issue or crash because of this "memory leak". I've done the processes tab thing and I don't see that creep you are talking about. I can log into SL at 8 am on a Saturday and log off at 10 pm that evening..........never crash. Granted I'm not in a constant crowd while on all day, but i'm often tping around shopping or just looking. I also do building. I've tp'd to heavily populated areas and decided it's time to fix lunch and eat........coming back an hour or so later. I'm "asleep" of course but as soon as I move my mouse I'm back to normal.

There is nothing special about this computer except it's a fairly high end for an off the shelf desktop. Lenovo 3000 K Series. I have Vista Home Premium. And, this is the fourth computer I've had since coming to SL in late 2005 (the first three were all XP machines). None of those machines crashed due to a memory issue that I know of.......actually, I've never had a big problem crashing for any issue. I think I might have .NET Framework on this computer but I know I never had it before.

Intell Core 2 duo Q1066 (quad core), 3 gigs DDR2 RAM, nVidia 8600GT (256 VRAM), 500 gig SATA Western Digital hard drive partitioned to 30 gigs/470 gigs spinning at 7200 RPM.

My normal CPU and RAM usage when in world is 20% and 45 to 50%........and holds pretty steadily the whole time I'm on SL. Even on my old P4 dual core CPU the usage hardly ever went above 60% and my 1.5 gigs of DDR RAM stayed pretty steady at about 65 or 70%. What am I doing that you are not? I wish I knew so I could tell you how to fix it.

First things first, .NET doesn't contain OpenGL bits. I've seen you say that several times, AWM, and it's just not true. In fact, Microsoft doesn't offer an OpenGL driver for Vista at all. You need to get it from the GPU manufacturer.

Peggy - Not sure what to tell you. I can use SL for 6-8 hour stretches before a crash. It always crashes when I hit a 1.8GB commit charge, without fail, nor has it managed to go above that without crashing.

The memory leak in question is the mere fact that the viewer (I use 1.19, but it happens with 1.20 as well) allocates memory but does not release everything it allocates (I do see it doing some garbage collection, but it doesn't do much, and it saves maybe 10 or 20MB).

There don't seem to be any special requirements to make it crash. I can sit alone the whole time and it'll still happen. If I'm visiting lots of places then it may crash a bit sooner, but it still takes several hours.

As for what you're doing that we aren't, I don't think you're doing anything that we aren't, unless you've added garbage collection routines into your version of the viewer. You're the first person that I've spoken to about this issue that does not crash, in fact, so you are an oddity in the SL world.

CPU usage doesn't really factor into it. What you see is normal. The SL viewer doesn't do any sort of physics calculations, which means that the processors aren't pegged.

Vista ships with .NET 3.0, so you do have it (although you may not have 1.x or 2.x).

My relevant specifications for those intertested: 2.2GHz Intel E4500, 2GB RAM, Vista Ultimate x64 SP1.

Robot, I never said it supplies Drivers for OpenGL, I said 'OpenGL runtime libraries' for the OpenGL platform, which SL is one of them. Try running SL without .NET Framework installed!
If you read up on .NET Framework you will see many references to the OpenGL platform. If those libraries and API call become corrupt, that may have an effect on the SL Client. I keep mentioning this simply because many issues have been resolved, over the many years, I have been assisting people to get their systems running.
Simply stating 'It is not true' is a red herring. There is no one answer to the many issues that people suffer, but a question of a elimination process.

If every user could provide a definiative report for every issue they have, it would be easier to identify the problem, however most do not know what goes on inside the system box. There is nothing wrong with that.

My advice to you is, stop trying to prove people wrong, and simply add to the list of potential fixes. Unless you are the expert for every issue?

Here is the thing why do some people say they never crash and some people do? Well one possiblity is they don`t maintain their own system but their support they get from when they bought it does it.... hence they say they never crash....Then again these same people say they don`t lag either even when the game server are indeed lagging..So at times you can`t believe people and their remarks at times. But indeed .NET does play a important part in the playing of SL........But do you realy need to reinstall fresh copies of .NET say when you already have 3.0 .NET ?

I get the "Out of memory" error whenever I use the regular SL viewers. It has been said many times that SL viewers have "memory leakage" issues (which for whatever reason only seem to affect some of us badly). So I use the Nicholaz viewers, and have never had the problem with them. You can find info at
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/

SL uses parts of .NET, although it certainly seems as if you're assuming that it's due to OpenGL. I've never seen anything in the API specs that made it seem as if OpenGL components were included.

.NET is a vast framework that does lots of things, 3D rendering among them (via the DirectX API set already included in Windows). However, if you'd like to provide proof of Microsoft distributing OpenGL components within .NET, then feel free to do so.

Also, what issue am I diverting attention away from when I say that it's not true that .NET distributes OpenGL components?

I also have no doubt that reinstalling .NET may fix certain problems, but you're making the claim that it's due to this reinstalling OpenGL components, which sounds fishy (appropriate to the "red herring" comment).

It is possible for .NET files to become corrupt (although it is rare). If this does happen it could help to uninstall and reinstall the .NET framework (which consists of a few different versions, none of which are compatible with each oher. 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, then some service packs).

How do you know anything about .NET. AWM Mars is the one thats always points out the issues with .NET and he is right about it most of the time.....

I'm one of those people you are talking about who seldom crash (I've never said I never crash because I have crashed..........crashed hard to the desktop). I'm also one of those people who don't experience a lot of lag......EXCEPT WHEN THE SERVERS ARE LAGGING (and I almost always toss in that "except when servers......". If you choose to not believe me that's fine.......but don't put doubt on me to others, please. I have no reason to lie on this forum nor do I have any incentive to exxerate my less than "normal" problems using SL. Yes, I do maintain my system, I do update my software, I do clean my case out regularly, and when I see what I think is problem developing I attempt to fix it before it gets unmanagable. I simply use common sense with the operation of my computer..........it's a relatively expensive toy for me and I treat it with respect.

Most problems reported here eventually wind up being resolved in some fashion. And when the person reveals what actually resolved the poblem, it's often something in the individuals setup or operation of the the individual computer. Is SL a stable software? Actually I think it is very unstable compared to most "games"........but it's also quite unique in the way it has been developed. Can it be played in a satisfactory way? Absolutely it can.......but if you slack on your computer system and maintenace (and don't use common sense in the use of your computer) you are asking for trouble, problems and frustrations.

For the record.....and read it completely:
I SELDOM crash on SL. I don't USUALLY lag unless it's SERVER SIDE. People reporting crashing problems in this forum are mostly crashing often and severely. People reporting lag are experiencing constant lag all the time. Those are the people who have problems and those are the people I attempt to help. I know SL can be played without those problems.........I know because I can. And I'm not a computer geek or expert in anyway.

He's told the user to reinstall the .NET framework in every post I've seen him make. When you tell everyone to do that you'll be right from time to time. I don't think I've seen that be the actual solution yet, however.

For example, I could tell everyone having issues to uninstall and reinstall SL, and I'd be right a certain percentage of the time. I could tell everyone to clean out their chassis every time and I'd be right a certain percentage of the time. I'm sure that I could tell everyone to kick the side of the computer and I'd be right a certain percentage of the time (although it's not a reliable or permanent solution to dislodged components).

How do I know anything about it? I've been following .NET development for several years. Microsoft makes lots of information available about it. I've even learned some .NET programming, although due to a lack of time I've never gotten very far (learned some C#).

Server side lag is the most common kind, since most functions happen server side in SL, although having a high latency or someone can be hogging your pipe, which could also cause client side lag (although it's not an issue of lack of maintenance, rather, an inability of the Internet connection to keep up in a timely manner. Considering that when idling in a not too busy area with no music, though, that SL utilizes a good 6 or 7KB/s, then client side lag shouldn't happen very often for anyone, rather, people assume it is client side).

As for system maintenence, I do maintain my system, and do get SL crashes every several hours. I've done various amounts of monitoring on SL, and it does seem to be related to memory leaks. I'll catch it in a debugger next time it happens on my Vista box, since I'd be interested in seeing what's going on internally at that moment.

Robot, my fuss is not with people who differ with my methods or whatever to deal with client side lag and crashes. It's with someone casting doubt on my honesty in my accessment of what is happening with my experiences in SL. I do not experience near the problems you and many others experience. I do not idle in a quiet sim at 768 meter high. I actually play the game. Shop in busy malls and shops, I go to live music events that have extremely popular artists, I attend clubs that have popular DJ's. I spend 6 to 12 hours logged in on weekends. I've even been building and decided I needed a texture for something and opened GIMP while still in building mode and made one to upload.......and GIMP is very graphic intensive if you are mapping a texture to an object. I did not crash. I lagged like hell but I survived the event.

And, I've said many times, I'm no expert. I don't own the latest and greatest computer made. I use Vista Home on a wired home network with another computer being used a lot of the time I'm on SL. That user also has SL and we never have issues.

I just don't like when someone implies I'm lying.

Oh, well, I can't speak for others, but I believe you. But like I said before, you appear to be an oddity in my experience. That doesn't mean you're lying, it just means that you're in the minority.

And I'm not referring to you.