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Vista Hands On #17: Solving a pesky resource problem

By | July 26, 2007, 4:53am PDT

Summary: Are you experiencing odd “out of memory” errors or display problems with Windows Vista when you try to open a large number of programs or windows? Even if you have multiple gigabytes of physical memory in your Windows Vista system and you’re using only a fraction of it, you can still run into this problem. It turns out the cause is more than a decade old, and the solution is as simple as tweaking a Registry key to bump up the size of the mysterious interactive desktop heap. I’ve got the details.

Have you experienced any of these problems with Windows Vista? After opening a large number of programs and windows, you try to launch a new program or open a new browser tab or even switch back to an already running program and instead:

  • You get a strange “out of memory” message, despite the fact that you’re using only a fraction of the RAM installed on your system.
  • The window opens but its contents refuse to load.
  • The window opens, but menus are missing, dialog boxes are empty, or buttons don’t work.

In my case, I experienced this problem regularly on multiple Vista systems when I opened Outlook 2007, Forte Agent, Adobe Acrobat (editing three or four large documents), BlogJet, Windows Live Writer, Word (working with several large documents), and IE7 with more than 30 tabs. The problem vanished for me, as it does for most people, when I closed a few windows, but that’s obviously not the ideal solution. After all, what’s the point of having all that RAM if you can’t use it?

The problem, as it turns out, is as old as the Windows NT family. I’ve found references to this issue that date back to the mid-1990s and Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5. The fix for Vista, just as for those much older versions of Windows, involves editing a key in the Windows Registry.

First the problem: Windows sets aside a blob of system memory called the desktop heap, which it uses to store user interface objects such as windows, menus, and hooks. The Microsoft Advanced Windows Debugging and Troubleshooting Blog offers a dense, but still readable explication of the problem and why it occurs (it’s a two-part series: read the Desktop Heap Overview first and if your eyes haven’t glazed over read the shorter Desktop Heap Part 2 for details that are specific to 64–bit Windows, systems with 3GB of RAM, and Windows Vista).

The fix for 32–bit Windows Vista is simple: The interactive desktop heap size needs to be bumped up to a value greater than its default setting of 3072KB. I recommend a conservative approach: increase the value to 4096 and try that for a while. If you continue to bump into the problem, try a higher value. On one system here, I’ve been running without issues using a value of 8192KB.

Before I explain how to make the change, I offer the following disclaimers: Editing the Registry is not a trivial task. If you make a mistake, or if your system doesn’t work the way mine does, you could end up causing damage to data or render your system unbootable. You do this at your own risk.

OK, with that out of the way, here are the step-by-step instructions:

  1. Click Start, type regedit in the Search box, and click the Regedit icon that appears at the top of the Start menu.
  2. Click OK in response to the UAC prompt.
  3. In Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    – SYSTEM
    – – CurrentControlSet
    – – – Control
    – – – – Session Manager
    – – – – – SubSystems
  4. In the contents pane to the right, double-click the Windows value from the bottom of the list. This opens an Edit String dialog box containing a very long text string.
  5. Scroll through this text value until you find the section that begins with SharedSection. Change the second value from its default of 3072 to a higher number. Do not change any other values.

desktop_heap_regedit.png

Restart the computer. If your experience is like mine, you’ll find that those odd error messages are gone and that you’re able to open many more windows without any display issues.

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Topics

Window, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows, Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.

Disclosure

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is a freelance technical journalist and book author. All work that Ed does is on a contractual basis.

Since 1994, Ed has written more than 25 books about Microsoft Windows and Office. Along with various co-authors, Ed is completely responsible for the content of the books he writes. As a key part of his contractual relationship with publishers, he gives them permission to print and distribute the content he writes and to pay him a royalty based on the actual sales of those books. Ed's books written prior to fall 2011 have been distributed by Que Publishing (a division of Pearson Education) and by Microsoft Press. As of November 2011, Ed is a partner in the independent publishing company Fair Trade Digital Exchange, which exclusively publishes his books.

On occasion, Ed accepts consulting assignments. In recent years, he has worked as an expert witness in cases where his experience and knowledge of Microsoft and Microsoft Windows have been useful. In each such case, his compensation is on an hourly basis, and he is hired as a witness, not an advocate.

Ed does not own stock or have any other financial interest in Microsoft or any other software company. He owns 500 shares of stock in EMC Corporation, which was purchased before the company's acquisition of VMware. In addition, he owns 350 shares of stock in Intel Corporation, purchased more than two years ago. All stocks are held in retirement accounts for long-term growth.

Ed does not accept gifts from companies he covers. All hardware products he writes about are purchased with his own funds or are review units covered under formal loan agreements and are returned after the review is complete.

Biography

Ed Bott

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications. He's served as editor of the U.S. edition of PC Computing and managing editor of PC World; both publications had monthly paid circulation in excess of 1 million during his tenure. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office, including the recently released Windows 7 Inside Out.

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RE: Vista Hands On #17: Solving a pesky resource problem
Webster 23rd Jul 2009
What about Vista64?? Why did you skip over the fix for 64-bit windows?
View in thread
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That's crazy
wolf_z 26th Jul 2007
"systems when I opened Outlook 2007, Forte Agent, Adobe Acrobat (editing three or four large documents), BlogJet, Windows Live Writer, Word (working with several large documents), and IE7 with more than 30 tabs."

Who in their right mind does this? Depending on how you count it that's either 7 or 42+ simultaneous (and large) applications.

Not to mention 42+ seperate tasks. Multi-tasking much, Ed? happy Perhaps we should report you to the SPCC (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Computers).

I've *never* seen any user do that. Ever.

My busiest user might have 5 applications open simultaneously--none of them with multiple documents in any one app.

Even in mid-development mode I'm not going to have that many open at once. Don't know about you but I need to *concentrate* on what I'm doing, not split my attention 42 different ways...
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Irrelevant
frgough 26th Jul 2007
Just because you don't doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to. And he would be able to on a modern operating system, not some hacked 90s OS.
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1990's relic
shoktai@... 26th Jul 2007
Agreed. It is sad that Vista was built on the old NT kernel.
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nothing crazy
PhilippeV 27th Jul 2007
Having 42 windows open is not necessarily a disturbing idea. I do think that this corresponds to the way the user manages his working space, and the way he wants to have fast response for various needs at different times.

Certainly, he won't need to work simulatneously on the 42 windows, but he wants to have them available fast when he needs them. That's what operating systems were made for: allowing users to choose themselves the order of interactions they want with the running apps, and schedule themselves their work in each app according to their desire.

So many windows will remain open for tasks to be completed later, but there's nothing wrong with this usage. Many of these windows are acting like a reminder for things noted at one time but to be performed later. It's then up to the OS (and its GUI) to help the user organize his work, order them, finding and selecting them in a easy to use way.

A user opening lots of windows is certainly not stupid if he has built his own way to manage his work with them. Yes we know that many dumb users are keeping (forgetting) many windows open despite they will have no desire to work with them later. This occured quite often in the past with older GUI interface designs where these windows could be easily forgotten in the background. But the Windows and Office GUI has been improved since their initial version. It's now hard to forget that there are many backdround windows and document needlessly left open.

Some things that have been added in Windows to help users closing their unneeded documents:
* the LRU lists (such as "Recent documents"), this features help organizing the work, allowing documents not immediately needed to be closed and reused later without having to search for them in a complicate way.
* the grouping of icons in the taks bar that helps sorting long lists of open windows and documents.
* changing multiple browser windows by grouping them into tabs
* and so on...

As you see, many open documents is not necessarily a crazy idea, and a better GUI design will in fact allow having such thing.

Andlet's not forget that now the OSes are made so that we don't need to reboot them everyday or several times each day just to reclaim good performance. If the system is used over a long period, I don't see why documents need to be closed if they will be reused over this longer period.

Each one chooses his way to organize his work. And if he chooses to use the newer GUI features so that more documents/windows are left open without cuasing them more nightmare to remember what he projects to do, it's not to the OS to limit arbitrarily the user in this choice. So the OS must improve to allow users to do that according to their usage.
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Really?
jacarter3 26th Jul 2007
So you don't have email and browsers running somewhere always? You stop development, unload these tools and then load these clients and then unload and reload your development environment several times everyday? You don't use Excel for table capture or sorting while you enumerate data?

Since I do primarily engineering and science algorithms, I keep several engineering and math tools (real memory and resource hogs) up that are used to verify the accuracy and fidelity of the models and algorithms, while I hard code them and verify the C/C++ code representation of the model after building new modules. I generally have a minimum of 7 to 10 apps running and usually even more with my browser tuned to several sites at once as well as frequent searches for Internet resources to augment my personal resources in the course of work which of course must be documented in Office and printed to PDF in nearly real time for my pointy headed boss.

You must have an easy job and or a limited mental multi-tasking ability, that's all I can say...
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Contributr
Absolutely right
Ed Bott 26th Jul 2007
In my case, I was updating chapters of my next book. In order to do that, I needed to be able to quickly cross-reference previous editions and other chapter files. That's why I had Acrobat and Word open with multiple files - because I'm actively working with them.

My RSS reader and e-mail client program are always open and downloading content at regular intervals. Should I continually close and reopen them?

For me, this environment is not cluttered. It representa what I'm working on. At the end of the day, I clean up, add bookmarks to pages I found interesting, copy notes to OneNote, and deliver files to my publisher. The desire and/or need to continually close windows and reopen them is so old-school.
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Oh, is that why your books
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
don't have a natural progression?

JUST KIDDING!! I have a number myself and use your site a lot.
happy
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easy job?
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
I didn't count over 42 sessions for you Carter. There is a point of diminishing returns like everything else. You can call anyone that doesn't have more than 42 sessions open as having it easy, but you are blowing smoke.
If I think i might...only might need a site later on, just bang a s/c out to my desktop and close it. 2 seconds.

I have 15 sessions going on this PC right now, and that is about average. 25 would be very high end.

But then again, I have an easy job.
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another NBMer talking!
Linux Geek 26th Jul 2007
[My busiest user might have 5 applications open simultaneously--none of them with multiple documents in any one app.]
So windoze limits you to a few apps.
Switch to Linux, you will never ran out of resources even if you used tens of apps on a dual monitor!
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Message has been deleted.
Hallowed are the Ori Updated - 26th Jul 2007
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Message has been deleted.
OButterball Updated - 26th Jul 2007
  • Flagged
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Does Linux have enough applications to reach such a limit?
ye 26th Jul 2007
Just kiding, just kiding happy
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The matter isn't the OS here...
Mitch 74 27th Jul 2007
...it's a setting for the desktop environment which is at fault. Under Linux, you could have such a problem if, say, KDE used a fixed size buffer for desktop elements.
Since the desktop environments are usually smarter than that and had to deal with heavily multitasking environments, I'd say that this is the kind of problem you won't get that easily. Moreover, the Linux desktop being heavily modular, I'm not even sure this kind of caching actually takes place.
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Yes it has
PhilippeV 27th Jul 2007
The same (or similar) set of applications described by the author of the article also exist on Linux:
* browsers (with optional tabs)
* word processors
* publishing tools (like PDF converters or layout engines)
* drawing tools
* database applications
* e-mailing and other user-communication
* notepads/scrapbooks and management of notes
* job organizers
* terminal applications (for working on remote sites)...
* source editors
* compilers
* ongoing (long) automated software test suites...

All these may needto be open simultaneously throughout the day because they may perform continuously and automatically some background tasks, or because they are left running in the background and not demanding a permanent interaction with the user to perform their task, or only because the user wants to schedule his work over a longer time period.

There is NO reason to think that Linux or Windows should be better than the other for doing this. Most of the time, it will just be a matter of usability of the GUI, and user's preferences or training with one of the GUIs. But Linux-based GUIs (or Mac) and Windows are all converging to a very common set of features.

And if you think that Linux does not have the same kind of arbitrary limitations in the implementation of its system components and services or in apps than in Windows, you're wrong,simply because there are lots of softwares written now to run indistinctly with the same features on all these environments, and they are designed/programmed using the same kind of solutions.

The first thing that becomes obvious when you look at any software is that the first goal to meet in these softwares is that they will work for their own task, and other considerations like interaction with other apps and scalability comes only later, because this is a much more complex issue that requires experience based on users demand. finding the most accurate way to manage many concurrent applications is not an easy task:

You can't tune your application to work in complex environments before you have not asserted that your application was properly doing its job in simpler environments (the first need will be to avoid internal software bugs, and an initial design is necessarily simple, in order to avoid many complex forgotten cases).

Software users will complain much more if there's a bug in a software that does not work in a simple environment. And this fixes the first priority (they are ready to accept that resources may be exhausted if their computer does not meet some minimum requirements, but this additional cost is perceived as marginal face to the cost of bugs or if the aplication does not fulfill its intended goal within the defined minimum environment).

Now if the software works perfectly in a minimum environment, they will want scalability and adaptation to more complex situations, but this is almost always a second goal: this MUST NOT break the first goal.

The fact that all this runs under Linux or Windows is irrelevant: users will always want their tasks to be done correctly, and then want these tasks to be simple to use along with other unrelated tasks.
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yep
pavka@... 27th Jul 2007
I am running Firefox with something like 40 open tabs, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, kile (LaTeX editor), and HTML editor, FTP, ICQ and in freeciv there's game that I started two weeks ago and is still running (I never close its window) - this on a old PC with 1 GB of RAM which also runs a web server. And, when I want to view a movie - I just start it, there's never a consideration of "is there enough memory". The current active application just gets the memory it needs.
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dual monitor?
Arm A. Geddon 26th Jul 2007
what, you've never used virtual desktops? silly boy. happy

gnu/linux...giving choice to the nex(11)t generation.
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of coures.
rtk 27th Jul 2007
Virtual destkops are no where near as useful or productive as dual (or more) monitors.
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Multiple monitors vs; virtual desktops
PhilippeV 27th Jul 2007
The bad thing about multiple monitors is that they are voluminous, not mobile (not made for laptops), spend lot of energy, and you typically finish by working only on a single one.

GUI features like virtual desktops are not a panacea (because they completely hide the currently unused desktops, so you may forget that documents are left open there) but they have their use for those that like them and use them with reason; my opinion is that all should be easy to perform using a single screen, if the GUI offers enough easy-to-use features, and with such GUI features, multiple virtual desktops have absolutely no use (I am persuated that there are much better GUI features to organize our work).

Multiple desktops may be more useful if there are multiple indeterminate users of the same computer (at different time, but sharing the same user account, session and privileges), each one managing their work independantly. But they would be more useful if those virtual desktops could be freely moved to a separate (possibly remote) true desktop, on demand.
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Multiple Monitors for specific kinds of tasks
Dr_Zinj 27th Jul 2007
I prefer multiple monitors when doing cutting and pasting from one document to another because I can bring them up side by side for direct comparison.

And mutiple monitors are very handy for games environments where you have the real time game running and need to do a quick bit of research on the side, are running multiple accounts (how many 'bots do you have following you around?); or most importantly for domestic bliss, when your wife wants to check her e-mail in the middle of a combat raid!
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Perfest for a permanent (wired) desktop at home but
PhilippeV 27th Jul 2007
As long as you don't need a mobile environment, and your computer at home can be left in a place where it won't be disturbing your other daily environment, using multiple monitors (if you really want to dedicate such space into your home) is perfect.

The legimitate desire of having two documents opened at the sem time to perform copy/paste operations does not seem sufficient to justify a second monitor.

Many users just use CTLR+C, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V to do this without even having to raise the hand to drag and drop the copied elements, and they do that much more easily, faster and more precisely with keyboard shortcuts than with a mouse.

Note that on laptops, this desire of having multiple documents open at the same time has been a large factor of the success of wide display panels (instead of multiple monitors that would not meet the ease of transportation and installation).

Note that the extension of the display width has also allowed wider and more cumfortable keyboards on laptops,without increasing their weight and total size for transportation, and such laptops remain usable on small surfaces (because an increased height of the screen would have meant an increased needed depth for the horizontal part: imagine what it would be on the small table facing you in a train or plane trip, or if you use your laptop in your parked car..., or if there's someone in front of you.)
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MM >>> VD
bkinsey@... 27th Jul 2007
The day I can virtualize one of those desktops into a holographic heads-up display, I'll go for it. Until then, give me the extra visual real estate of more than one physical monitor. . . .
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I was just having a little fun with linux geek.
Arm A. Geddon 27th Jul 2007
whatever works for one might not work for another. there will also be "spaces" to use too.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/spaces.html

gnu/linux...giving choice to the nex(11)t generation.
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Guess you have never
Linux User 147560 26th Jul 2007
been around Linux or Unix users have you? devil
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Yeah., YOu tell Him LU.....you guys need to have
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
42 FF windows open at all times to be able to quickly respond to all of the posts you have going on ABM subjects on this forum. I can see that. No sense in scrolling up and down a given page even, hell you can have a session for everyone of your posts for easy access.
I get it. wink
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No you don't
Linux User 147560 27th Jul 2007
With the built in multiple desktops I am able to keep my work flow sorted and easy to access. I don't have to close apps to make room on my tool bar, I simply move to the appropriate desktop.

On desktop #1 I have Evolution, Firefox, KMail, Kopete open. Desktop #2 I have Eclipse, PerlComposer and Epic as well as Quanta and of course PostGreSQL Access.
Desktop #3 I have several spreadsheets, word documents and PDF files open. Sometimes as many as 30 or 40 (and if I exceed 20 then I will move them over to desktop #4), depending on what I am working on / researching as well as another instance of Firefox with the appropriate web sites for my research. I generally will have 3-6 projects I work on over the course of the day, plus I get all sorts of inquiries.

Desktop #4 runs Crystal Reports 10 via wine and is the spillover for excess documents I may have open.

So by having all this capacity to open files and leave them open and access them quickly by a couple of key strokes, I am able to answer questions rapidly while continuing with my task(s) at hand. I can't do this with Windows, it chokes and dies.

Now to top it off I also have Amarok playing with GKrellm running on all 4 desktops so I can monitor system performance and temperatures, and if I should really need to, I can quickly add more desktops, up to 20 if needed. Once I have one of my database projects finished, I will be running it in my sever section of this system so my co-workers will be able to access it over the net.

And I am doing this with the following hardware:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz 512kb cache (single core)
RAM: 3GB PC-2700
Graphics: nVidia GeForce4 MX440 AGP 8x
Drive(s): 1 80GB Seagate SATA and 1 300GB Seagate SATA

Now do you get it? I open a document or an application, I don't have to close it... especially since chances are really good I will need it again! And that is just on my Linux machine, the Windows machine next to it runs just 4 applications, and it seems happy with that. Anymore than 6 at a time and it starts to noticeably perform slower. Dems da facts... and the irony I maintain the Linux box and I have a professional IT staff that maintains the Windows box. OUCH! devil
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Now it's my turn, cowboy
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
In Zealot land, dems da facts alright. I have multiple desktops on my XP laptop. I can run VS 2003, VS2005, SQL Server 2000 enterprise, Sql server 2005, Expression web, any number of Access sessions for pass thru reporting from a DR, anywhere up to a dozen client sessioins from the housewide integrated healthcare system, so many IE sessions i've never stopped to count, IIS is running, MSDTC is running, AV is running, Outlook, exchange, Infopath sesssions (working on VSTO project lately). That was desktop one.

And this machine is running a 1.8Ghz centrino single core with 512MB of RAM. (it's not my personal machine ).

In other words, you are FOS. You like to talk the talk and think it's always going to be better than everyone else.


I also use, in one office I have access to, an old Gateway E-3200 with 384 MB RAM and win2000 pro 5.00.2195(SP4) and I can run several client sessions on the healthcare system, Outlook, Visual Studio, a number of Office apps and a couple dozen IE sessions w/o any noticable slowdown.


Dems da facts, cowboy.
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Oh cowboy!
Linux User 147560 27th Jul 2007
Like Windows "Cowboy" Bob? devil

Now don't get your ******* in a bunch there! How much overhead does your multi-desktop bolt on take? Hmm? And sister I don't just talk the talk, I walk the walk! Maybe that's why you are so pissy, ya sissy! devil
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well well.
xuniL_z 28th Jul 2007
Cowboy's a mind reader on top of all of his other talents.

Actually, when you take plain text, without body language and tone to work with, and come up with "pissy", you are more than likely applying your own mood or demeanor to it. That's what came to your mind, not what came out of me.

Yeah, trust me, it's easy to know you walk the walk. You keep reminding of it all the time, i'm sure it's well known you are a living legend. From your childhood, the coolest of custom rods, sports achievements, navy stories and how you put an Admiral in his place and how easily you talked about being told you'd make an excellent chief, to your storied career and running total of people you've moved from windows and how each and every one of them are better human beings for it.

Yeah, no need to say you walk the walk....again.

I'm sure I'm no match for you, but I'm proud of what I've done so far in life. I don't feel a need to flaunt it, and I'm proud of that. I do talk about my work sometimes, but always is my intention to only use it as example from my personal experience.


Very little overhead to run multiple desktops. Like I said and a poster to your original down below a bit shares a similar situation, i'm working with far less of a machine than you and am pulling off as much load. XPSP2 is a solid and very good OS.
this business about "it seems happy with 4 or 5 sessions" is what I was responding to mainly. I don't believe you to lie, a bit of braggadocio yes, lie no, so I don't know why you said that. you have to know better? Unless your XP machine is ancient and running on 32MB of RAM or something.

the other thing too, about windows is that you can take advantage of their 64 bit versions now. the core 2 duos enabled for 64 bit is a good time to run Vista Ultimate x64. I fully believe Microsoft thought the world would be much closer to 64 bit as a standard than it is, when they started building Vista. I believe it was designed with 64 bits in mind.


Regardless, now is the time to start moving to 64 bit processing.
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Oh, about you calling me a "sissy".
xuniL_z 28th Jul 2007
I won't mention what you are, but only that it rhymes with "glass bowl".



devil
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well..
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
You think multiple desktop is Linux specific? Or with 3GB of RAM you shouldn't be able to do what you listed? With 1/6 the RAM I can do as much as you on XP. Nice Solid OS. And so many apps available for free or otherwise. why would anyone want to use anything else?
devil

devil
devil
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It's not native to Windows...
Linux User 147560 27th Jul 2007
like just about everything else you have to get some 3rd party application to get something similar to what Linux has natively. And multiple desktops and the ability to have multiple people simultaneously log in is native to Linux... not Windows.

Your just sore because ya know I am right and as usual u b wrong! devil
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No, you just love
xuniL_z 28th Jul 2007
telling me I'm wrong when I haven't even questioned what you are telling me. I never said a word about linux and multiple desktops. I just said you can do multiple desktops with XP. didn't say it was native, so what are you talking aobut? bragging about linux again? I can't help you there. It's a great OS. I'm not trying to say otherwise. Maybe the fact that your gang of OSS thugs can't get off Windows users, like some kind of cult, is bugging me a bit. Mainly because there are people I love, people i respect and people that are trying make a real difference in this world using Windows everyday and they don't need a bunch of yahoos ranting on about how ignorant they are everyday. I'm sure they couldn't care one bit what radicals are saying, but i think they need rattled now and then.


btw, save your fingertips, everyone knows you are always right.
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Did all that extremely complicated hard work occur?
Ole Man 27th Jul 2007
Just before or after you reactivated?

Did you run a test to see how much WGA
slowed your system while you were running
this multitude of tasks?

Did you have Automatic Update turned off so
Windows wouldn't reboot in the middle of
your post?

Did you read your EULA this morning to
remind yourself how much Microsoft still
loves you?

SMILE! You're on candid ZDNet.
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No, Ole man.
xuniL_z 28th Jul 2007
I have a life. I'm not obsessed like you apparently are with Microsoft. You breate, eat and sleep Microsoft and what you can say next, don't you?

I've worked much of this summer helping a site with a major parking shortage issue. I'm not working only with IT directly these days. Mostly but they pull me into other projects. Negociated with the city to allow us to turn a street of metered parallels into 2 hour diagonals. netted about 70 spaces. Not bad. Wasn't rocket science, nor finding the antedote to cure windows users from the spell Gates has put them under or anything like that.

btw, I would not haved told you what i've been up to, nor even thought of it if you didn't hound me incessently about what Microsoft is doing to me lately. That reminds me, did you ever find out if that guy stalking you worked for Microsoft?
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The adventures of Zuny
Ole Man 29th Jul 2007
We certainly enjoy the adventures of Zuny
here on ZDNet. That was a breathtaking
episode. Tune in again tomorrow, folks, for
another exciting excursion into the world of
Zunyland!

By the way, Zuny. It's your overworked
egotistic dramatic imagination that
is "hounding" you, and your pathetic reading
comprehension isn't helping you any either.
Microsoft's atrocities and your measly
shilling doesn't amount to a hiccup on the
earthquake seismograph to me. I just like to
give you a little jab or two when you start
your long-winded imaginative ridiculous
boring tales of magical Microsoft powers and
whining about anything that isn't Microsoft.

You reeeeeeeely SHOULD read your EULA more
often. You sound like you need some cheering
up, and that should rub salt in your
woun.... er..ahhhh..that is, give you great
solace.
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Don't know what you feed YOUR Windows. . .
bkinsey@... 27th Jul 2007
But that hardware config should handle the load you describe pretty easily. Not that you don't have lower system overhead in Linux, and this isn't a bash at any OS, but I regularly run that kind of application load on a lesser machine running XP SP2 w/ no problems.

My specs:
Sempron 1.5GHz
1GB PC2700
nVidia GeForce FX 5200
40GB Seagate ATA-100.

Another post below shows what I had open earlier, and it's not much different ever. No performance issues. *shrug*
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That's my Linux rig
Linux User 147560 27th Jul 2007
the company provided and maintained Windows XP is a Dell Optiplex GX260 with a new dual head ATi video card.

CPU = 2.0GHz Intel P4
RAM = 2GB
Video = ATi Radeon 7000 dual head
Not sure of the drive since I am not allowed to open the case. I could look it up since it's a Dell system

Theoretically it should at least match what I can do with Linux as for application loads. Even when I was running my Linux system on 1.25GB of RAM I was out loading and performing the P4 Windows XP... professional. Keep in mind the Win box is maintained by a professional staff of Windows admins. I maintain the Linux box.

There ya go. devil
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Got ya. . .
bkinsey@... 27th Jul 2007
Understood. I will say that, as the head of a *small* professional staff of Windows admins, two things you don't do that really can kill your performance are letting Windows handle it's own virtual memory settings, and running IE. Of course, both of those things are defaults. . . . Mileage with your professional staff may vary happy
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You work for the MAN!!!!
xuniL_z 30th Jul 2007
Ha ha ha ha haaaaa haaaaa! I would think a man of your caliber would be running his own business.


No cahones? devil
I guess your "company" doesn't have very good technicians if they can't get the same performance out of box like that.

So explain how I can get equal performance on a 512MB system?
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excellent feature
the_fiddler_on_the_roof 4th Dec 2007
very good post, especially that i face the same issues (on a windows machine). virtual desktops are a great productivity improvement. i haven't noticed them in vista (maybe i just happened to miss them due to some wacky new name like "programs and features" instead of familiar "add/remove programs"?) putting all 30-40 windows on 1 desktop is a nightmare - your left Alt and Tab keys, sometimes left Shift key, require replacement after a year. i wonder how microsoft envisioned productivity with 3d flip - you have 1 desktop, 40 windows, just stack them and rotate and see up to date but blurred surface of those windows, and you still get to kill those 2-3 keys. instead why not have 4 desks and put 10 windows on each? you just "turn" desks. did chief software officer miss that detail? wink if he was the "father" of 3d flip, i understand why virtual desktops never made it... wink
now of course there are 3rd party products that do this etc. it's out of the box expierence that counts most, not the "experience patches", costing you time to find them or money...
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I do that
voska 26th Jul 2007
I usually have at least 10+ windows open at anyone time. Right now I have 12 Plus firefox has 3 tabs as well. Works fine on Windows 2000 Pro. I'd hate to think Vista couldn't do that for me.
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Contributr
Vista would have no problem with that
Ed Bott 26th Jul 2007
I didn't run into problems until I had 30 or more browser tabs open in addition to the full productivity apps I mentioned.
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Depends on what you do with your computer
jsheehy@... 27th Jul 2007
I support several dozen customer's systems using PC Anywhere & terminal Server client. And I use my computer for many other things as well. As I'm writing this, I have 14 tabs open in IE7, 2 word documents open (one is HUGE), several instances of Acrobat Professional (manuals, mostly), two downloads running (drivers, etc.), 4 PC Anywhere connections, 1 Terminal Server client, 6 Excel spreadsheets, Outlook, and a softphone connected to my Asterisk PBX. System is an Athlon X-2 5000+ w/ 3gb of memory and I dual-boot between Vista Ultimate & XP MCE. The system runs all this extremely well, except for the occasional "resource" problem, for which this article was welcome info. Just bumped my "resource" heap to 4096 and I'll see if this is enough. I don't feel there is anything with using my computer to do what ever I want to do. Single tasking is silly.
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CRAZY??? REALLY???
Dr_Zinj 27th Jul 2007
Because if you think that's crazy, you're obviously not a researcher or writer.

I regularly had that many windows open at once when I was doing research and writing my thesis.
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What OS were you using?
xuniL_z 27th Jul 2007
Obviously not Windows.
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Another Multi-multi tasker
bkinsey@... 27th Jul 2007
Whether I'm in my right mind is open to question, but I've regularly got tons of apps running at once on my 1GHz XP desktop. Right now I've got Outlook (with my huge Exchange mailbox), 3 spreadsheets, 3 PDF's, an access database, 2 MMC consoles, a remote desktop session, 4 explorer windows, a GIS app, a Paradox database app, and 20-something floating windows in Opera. 20,000 handles, give or take, 571 threads, and 46 processes. TGIF. . . happy
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Has everyone forgotten
Freebird54 30th Jul 2007
that the stuff you deal with expands to fill the space available? After all, we use to be productive (!) with 2 floppy drives (so the program and data disks could both be loaded at once) !

Now that there is no need to shut things down for a 'mo' when something else needs doing, few *DO* shut 'em down. Pefectly reasonable happy

Apart from the heap troubles ('cured' by following the steps in this posting) NO 'modern' OS has as any real trouble with this sort of workload - although the operator may get lost once in a while!

The only real disadvantage for a Win system is the default load is padded by Anti-virus etc solutions, which limit the totals a bit....
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I use lots of different programs and windows
Nostredamus 27th Jul 2007
In My small office I run everything so I could be typing letters, issuing receipts, checking a spreadsheet or two for errors, and entering data, updating the gl, printing reports, as well as connecting to online sites and checking and sending emails - all at the same time.

It all depends what the user uses the computer for as to how many windows can be opened.
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Listen to the canary
royalef 28th Jul 2007
I do it all the time. It isn't unusual for me to have 30 copies of Internet eexplorer 6 open in Windows XP. And usually I will have all my background apps running, APple I-tunes playing, downloads in the background, notepad, word, sometimes photoshop for capturing pic of what I'm searching for. I do it all the time.

You have a very limited perspective on this.

This sounds like the old Windows Stack (GDI & USer). You remember those--window 3.1, 95, 98 all would run out of stack space because the number of window handles and objects on screen were too many. As programs built more and more complex interfaces the stack would run out with only 2-3 programs open. If Windows Vista still can't handle dynamic allocation of windows GDI resources, then that means that it is just a matter of time before graphic interfaces of programs become so complex and memory hungry that it takes far fewer programs to exhaust the Windows Stack/Heap.

This is proof of that day coming for everyone. The user probably hasn't changed the way he worked from XP to Vista, but the apps have changed--aggressively using up more objects than ever before.

Just consider this user the canary in the coal mine.

But if you belong to IT, you'll just ignore the user complaints and wait for them to become numb to the daily aggravation and just accept the lower standard.
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Not crazy
DNSB 28th Jul 2007
I've got a couple of users around here (out of ~1000) who have run into the same issue. They are the type who like leaving multiple applications with multiple documents left open on a long term basis and who often reference a myriad of web sites and like leaving them open in the browser to speed access. Not the way I use my computer but who am I to say they should not do what the OS allows them to do without an error/informational message.

Desktop Heap is low:
Close all that you have opened.
You ask far too much.
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RE: Vista Hands On #17: Solving a pesky resource problem
Webster 23rd Jul 2009
What about Vista64?? Why did you skip over the fix for 64-bit windows?

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