Windows7 eventually stalls.

Topic

New Reply

Apologies if this one has come up before, but I did do a search first …..

I have 2 recently acquired Dell XPS M1210 laptops, both of which exhibit the same symptoms. After about 12 hours or so of continuous operation on Windows 7, both of them will stall & not allow any further activity until after shutting down a couple of running programs & then rebooting. The consistent symptom appears to be the error message, “Not enough server storage is available to process this command”, followed by other error messages indicating that it no longer wants to play the game.

I have done extensive research on the net & have found that apparently the cause is that the IRPStackSize is not big enough on other devices to which the laptop connects & maps drives. I have set this parameter on the other devices on my home network, in particular the “file server” which is an XP box that stores all shared data & also acts as a printer server. On the file server, I have set the stack size to 48, which is very close to the limit of 50. After this, the occurrence of the error condition became less frequent, but certainly does still exist. Both of these laptops are routinely rebooted every morning & night.

The other identified sources of this problem are Norton AntiVirus & Acronis Tru-Image, neither of which is used anywhere on the home network.

I have very few problems mapping to shared drives on the other devices in the network, so it’s not really a network issue as such. Just as a precaution, I have also boosted the stack size on both laptops. For the record, the programs I close before being able to effect a reboot are Skype & Trillian. However, I have also tried running overnight with neither of these programs running & still got the error in the morning, so it doesn’t appear to be specifically associated with them either.

I’d welcome any further suggestions on tracking this one down.

Reply | Quote

Replies

Are these machines going to sleep or into hibernation and you get this error message when they wake up?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

Neither. They just stop working, because the error condition stops any new activity. Even starting up shutdown.exe to reboot the machine fails because it is a “new” activity. A couple of running programs must be exited first before a reboot can take place.

A Google search on the error statement yields masses of hits & there is a particularly good explanation here: http://winhlp.com/node/40 But I have done all that it describes & the problem still persists.

It is also not limited to Windows 7 – that’s just where I came across it.

Reply | Quote

The consistent symptom appears to be the error message, “Not enough server storage is available to process this command”, followed by other error messages indicating that it no longer wants to play the game.

What game are you running? And what are the other error messages?

Even starting up shutdown.exe to reboot the machine fails because it is a “new” activity. A couple of running programs must be exited first before a reboot can take place.

This sounds like you have run out of memory. Now much RAM do you have and what is your pagefile size? Have you monitored your memory usage? Have you determined which application is using up the memory? Task Manager should be able to provide that information.

Reply | Quote

Are these machines going to sleep or into hibernation and you get this error message when they wake up?

Thanks Dave. No hibernation. The screen saver is still running.

What game are you running? And what are the other error messages?

Sorry, Peter. Just a figure of speech. Not playing any games. See below.

This sounds like you have run out of memory. Now much RAM do you have and what is your pagefile size? Have you monitored your memory usage? Have you determined which application is using up the memory? Task Manager should be able to provide that information.

Nope, not running out of memory. When it fails, I still have approx 1GB of free RAM reported by Cacheman.

Your ‘page file’ could need defragging. I have it run at every boot.

Nope. Installed that & nothing has improved.

The underlying problem is “Not enough server storage is available to process this command”. This message doesn’t always appear, but it seems clear to me that it then causes additional error messages, or prevents any new programs from loading. I’m just surprised that with the hits I got from Google, it doesn’t seem to have come up in this forum until now.

Next step: I’m going to disconnect the shares on my laptop overnight & see if I still have the symptoms in the morning.

Reply | Quote

Your ‘page file’ could need defragging. I have it run at every boot. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx

Reply | Quote

Your ‘page file’ could need defragging. I have it run at every boot. http://technet.micro…s/bb897426.aspx

If you relocate a permanent pagefile to a dedicated small partition, it doesn’t get fragmented.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

If you relocate a permanent pagefile to a dedicated small partition, it doesn’t get fragmented.

The use of a partition will slow down the use of the pagefile, since the heads will have jump from partition to the other. If any thing a separate hard drive would be the best, then there is NO jumping.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

The use of a partition will slow down the use of the pagefile, since the heads will have jump from partition to the other. If any thing a separate hard drive would be the best, then there is NO jumping.

Yes, a separate hard drive is the best solution, but if the small dedicated partition is located physically next to the Windows paritition, the jumping is insignificant, particularly if one has 2GB+ RAM. I dare say that there would be less jumping around than if the the pagefile were located on the Windows partition and both Windows and the pagefile are fragmented, combined with all the jumping around required by defragging the pagefile every day. On a dedicated partition, it doesn’t get fragmented in the first place.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

Have you tried the IRPStackSize at about 18 or 20, it can also be too large. Also try changing the PagedPoolSize key value to 0.
How many shares do you maintain?

Reply | Quote

Thanks, Russ.

My laptop is still working this morning, which tends to confirm that the problem is in the shares & not something else.

I’ll work on gradually reducing the stack size on the server.

PagedPoolSize is zero.

I have 2 shares each from up to 4 laptops, all directed to the server.

Reply | Quote

Update: I disconnected the mapped drives & the problem took longer (about 18 hours instead of maybe 12 at the most) to occur, but still occurred. Which suggests it’s not the drive mappings, it’s the shared drives available on the home network. Which means I need to look further than just the XP server. The other laptop running Windows 7, for example.

On returning home, this process was typical of the problem:

Attempt to open MailWasher. Disk activity, but NOTHING happens.
Attempt to open Explorer. More disk activity, but NOTHING happens.
Attempt to open Task Manager. Application Error. The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142). Click OK to close the application.
Leave this window open, so that I can copy the error message & paste it into this post later.
From the TaskBar, close Skype, then Trillian, then other applications.
Open Explorer (successfully) & verify that (as above), I have no drives mapped.
Open FireFox, so that I can update this post ……..

Once I send this, I will need to reboot to get everything working again.

Reply | Quote