SSD's, Paging Files, and OOM's

[ramrunner800 10]

I have recently upgraded my rig(specs in my sig), so I did a clean FSX install, and tweaked the system according to Word Not Allowed's guide. I've so far loaded two addon's, the NGX and Flightbeam KSFOX, and I've been getting OOM's like crazy. I'm running 8GB of RAM, Windows 7 64-bit, and FSX Acceleration. I seem to be reading that my page file may have something to do with this, but honestly this is beyond my understanding at the moment. I have my page file set to System Managed on my 120GB OS SSD. Do I also need to set up a page file on the FSX drive? I feel like an obvious answer must be staring me in the face, but after a long day of overclocking and installing, my brain is a bit fried. I would really appreciate any tips on the problem, or even just some general knowledge of how page files work, and what their significance for us in FSX is. Thanks Guys!

[Ben Cap 89]

Are you sure you have FSX SP1 and SP2 installed?

[Illegitimi non carborundum 4]

RR

The paging file does not give rise to OOM's they are usually caused because you only have 4Gb of Virtual Address space VAS) for FSX to load into. This is the maximum allowed for 32-bit programs like FSX. The VAS has nothing to do with physical RAM or Paging File (aka Virtual Memory) . Two conditions cause OOM's 1) The VAS becomes defragmented so that there is no contiguous space for FSX to load into or it has become depleted. With complex add-ons both are likely to occur. You should not set your PF on an SSD as the continuous writes can be slower than a fast HDD and can eventually affect overall SSD performance. If the PF was at fault or being used because you had no physical RAM left your computer would slow down significantly and eventually you would get a message like "windows has run of available memory" and in the worst case scenario a BSOD ie a total system crash.

I do not have an answer to this problem as it can be caused by any number of variables.

FYI with 8GB RAM, I set a PF of 512Kb max/min on my system drive and 6GB max and min (prevents fragmentation) on a secondary fast HDD I set the latter figure so that I can carry out a memory dump in case of error. Based on my peak usage (via Task Manager) it could be as low as 2GB.

Regards

pH

[Iceman2 110]

Ramrunner

 

I assume you are running heavy addon scenery and aircraft like the NGX. If so and using Word Not Allowed's guide for your setup, drop the LOD_RADIUS back to 4.5 and go flying to test for an OOM. If you dont get an OOM up it a bit like 5.5 and go test it again.

 

I found I would get an OOM on an approach (5nm out) to a heavy airport like FSDT KLAX after a 4hour flight in the NGX with my LOD set to 6.5, I'm now at 5.0 and all is good. (I believe we reach the mem limit in FSX even with W7 64bit)

 

I've also got my PF on a separate drive not an SSD and have allocated an amount not sys controlled. W7 & FSX are on their own SSD.

 

IM

[Illegitimi non carborundum 4]

RR

Quote(I believe we reach the mem limit of FSX even with W7 64bit)Quote

 

Sorry but that's not the case you reach the limit of the VAS not the Physical RAM. You cannot cure an OOM by adding more RAM or increasing the PF

 

The VAS is part of the OS and the RAM is part of the hardware (a big fast cache) and if you ran out of the latter see my post above to see what would happen. Where you might technically reach the RAM limits is if you were running several exe files that interacted with FSX, but that would be unusual and you would probably be recording frame rates in the 1s and 2's.

 

Regards

pH

[ramrunner800 10]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I've definitely got both SP's installed, b/c they were part of acceleration.

 

I've looked at it a bit more, and I think I have a bit more info. When I view the event viewer after these crashes, the faulting module is unkown, and the exception code is :0xc0000005. A quick Google search reveals that this is a memory access violation. In the past I have also had several BSOD's with error code PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. As I didn't really know anything about this, I thought this was a variation on an OOM. Now it's apparent that I was mistaken. I'm thinking something may be wrong with my RAM.

 

I watched the resource monitor in a test flight, and FSX used 1.6-1.7GB of RAM, so I don't think my problem is running out of VAS (yet, who knows if that will happen once I conquer this).

 

Is there anything you think could be the cause of this, other than faulty RAM? Also, should I move my PF to one of my HDD's? I see that Window's will allow me to create more than one, so should I delete the old one? Thanks or your help.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Page Fault in NonPaged Area usually means RAM or hard drive fault. Not that either is totally failed, mind you, just that they have enough of a fault to start causing data corruption which can produce a blue screen (among other things). I'd suggest testing both, start with RAM. If you can boot from a memtest disk and run it all day or over night that's a good start. Otherwise, you can use an in-Windows tool to load up the RAM. I usually use Intel Burn Test on highest RAM setting. Note: this will heat up your CPU as much as it possibly can heat up given your cooling, so make sure your cooling is in good condition. This also has the added benefit of testing your overclocked stability, assuming you are overclocked.

[ramrunner800 10]

So, an update is in order. Google is replete with information about the dreaded 0xc0000005 exception code. I first ran Memcheck86 through 10 cycles, and all came up clear. I next ran CCleaner's registry cleaner, and my registry was a complete mess from the previous FSX installation. Still no dice, crashes happening, with seemingly random .dll's at fault. At this point, I reset my CMOS, and everything is working fine. It would appear something was wrong with my overclock.

 

I've got a GTX 680 and some 2600 MHz RAM that should be here today or tomorrow, so I'm going to start again from the ground up with a new overclock and a new installation of Windows. We'll see where it all goes from there. Thanks everybody for the ideas and advice!

[AliB 0]

I have recently upgraded my rig(specs in my sig), so I did a clean FSX install, and tweaked the system according to Word Not Allowed's guide. I've so far loaded two addon's, the NGX and Flightbeam KSFOX, and I've been getting OOM's like crazy. I'm running 8GB of RAM, Windows 7 64-bit, and FSX Acceleration. I seem to be reading that my page file may have something to do with this, but honestly this is beyond my understanding at the moment. I have my page file set to System Managed on my 120GB OS SSD. Do I also need to set up a page file on the FSX drive? I feel like an obvious answer must be staring me in the face, but after a long day of overclocking and installing, my brain is a bit fried. I would really appreciate any tips on the problem, or even just some general knowledge of how page files work, and what their significance for us in FSX is. Thanks Guys!

 

Page file on the FSX drive? NO!

 

You don´t mention all your hardware in the signature, what is your FSX drive?

 

Pagefile: Use 3072/3072 on the OS drive, and please study and apply what you understand here before you do anything else, ask questions, make tweaks, etc. etc.

 

http://www.simforums...187.html#198187

 

- and the new one in the works:

 

http://www.simforums...topic41484.html

[Illegitimi non carborundum 4]

RR

This has nothing to with RAM or the PF:

"PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA"

Windows often reports page faults they are often part and parcel of the OS and its interaction with the software it is running.

 

 

 

I watched the resource monitor in a test flight, and FSX used 1.6-1.7GB of RAM, so I don't think my problem is running out of VAS

- This has nothing to do with the VAS this monitors physical RAM which is NOT the VAS. You need to run something like VMMAP to monitor the VAS.

 

This error:

the exception code is :0xc0000005

is typical of one that you would see when the VAS has no contiguous space for FSX to load into (There are other reasons too).

 

If your hardware is OK then the problem lies in the way that FSX plus complex add-ons interact with the OS via the VAS.

Sorry but we need to separate the software from the hardware otherwise we may never be able to resolve these errors.

pH

[TechguyMaxC 516]

RR

This has nothing to with RAM or the PF:

 

Windows often reports page faults they are often part and parcel of the OS and its interaction with the software it is running.

 

In this case though it very well could be a hardware issue, since the page fault produced a stop code (i.e. BSOD). One could download Blue Screen View and get a wee bit more information as well. If a particular file can be assigned blame, naming it may very well help get to the bottom of the issue. If the file is just "ntoskrnl" then don't bother, it's a generic BSOD that could be caused by *anything*.

[Illegitimi non carborundum 4]

TechGuy

I would agree with you but I thought this was an OOM with FSX and not a BSOD? If he is seeing a BSOD then it could well be hardware related, but hard page faults are part and parcel how the cpu stores data in the RAM and happen all the time. If they are excessive then something may well be amiss.

pH

[dazz 69]

Page file on the FSX drive? NO!

 

Perfectly fine if it's an SSD

[TechguyMaxC 516]

TechGuy

I would agree with you but I thought this was an OOM with FSX and not a BSOD? If he is seeing a BSOD then it could well be hardware related, but hard page faults are part and parcel how the cpu stores data in the RAM and happen all the time. If they are excessive then something may well be amiss.

pH

 

This section in one of the OP's later posts lead me to believe there's more than just a crashing FSX here, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

 

"I've looked at it a bit more, and I think I have a bit more info. When I view the event viewer after these crashes, the faulting module is unkown, and the exception code is :0xc0000005. A quick Google search reveals that this is a memory access violation. In the past I have also had several BSOD's with error code PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. As I didn't really know anything about this, I thought this was a variation on an OOM. Now it's apparent that I was mistaken. I'm thinking something may be wrong with my RAM. "

[ramrunner800 10]

TechGuy

I would agree with you but I thought this was an OOM with FSX and not a BSOD? If he is seeing a BSOD then it could well be hardware related, but hard page faults are part and parcel how the cpu stores data in the RAM and happen all the time. If they are excessive then something may well be amiss.

pH

 

There was an OOM, but when I looked into it more (when less tired), I started finding more and more different .dll's (gidplus.dll, PNDG_737NGX.dll, nvd3dum.dll, weather.dll, ai_player.dll, g3d.dll...I could go on) causing the crashes. While test flying and trying to figure out the problem, I had a BSOD saying PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. When I did more research, I found that when there is a wide variety of .dll's experiencing this exception code, there is likely something wrong with the RAM's BIOS settings (or perhaps the modules themselves). I reset my CMOS, and all is well. Tomorrow I will be installing a new graphics card and RAM, and I'm going to completely wipe the machine and start again.

 

I do think the root cause here was human error, and something was wrong with my RAM's BIOS settings after I overclocked the first time, causing instability in the system.