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Cut Paste Memory Error

By paul@pvc ·
Six months ago, noticed Cut & Paste and Drag & Drop would just stop working. Related symptom: Office Excel would complain about running out of memory. This problem has been getting worse recently, requiring reboots a few times a day. Problem seem to happen more often when the dial-up connection to the internet is left open.

System has plenty of memory according to task manager. I recently added AntiVir XP and Spybot S&amp to get rid of viruses & spyware, so unless its an error left behind my viruses or spyware, thats not it. Installed CCleaner recently to see if that was the issue, but after cleaning the registry, no effect.

Recently added AnalogX Maxmem 1.02 and leave that in the system tray. If I keep manually clicking on it, it tends to reduce the frequency of rebooting required by several times, but does not eliminate the problem (Hint). Once the memory problem starts cleaning the memory does nothing to fix it.

Logging out in this case works properly, but logging back in causes the screen background to appear but none of the desktop icons ever come back up. Using Task manager, then, to shutdown has to wait to kill several processes, most notably explorer.exe (HInt)

Removed older software to see if that was the cause with no noticable effect. (several years ago ran SunBelt Software AutoPilot, but have not used it for years. Deleting did not effect problem.

System: Dual 733 Mhz 256 MB RamBus with 100 MB page file on C: drive and 200 MB page file on Drive.

Dual 10K 9 GB SCSI 160 drives partitioned with the largest partition on each drive being NTFS as the C: and Drives respectively. Both drive are defragged nightly and report 35 or more percent free.

Windows NT 4.0 Service Pak 6a with Internet Explorer 6.028 with IE Service Pak 1 and Memory/Security related patch (recently added to fix the problem) KB834707. Default Browser & Mail Netscape 7.2. Office 2000 with service Pak 2.

Is this a known memory problem and how can I fix it?

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by Blackcurrant In reply to Cut Paste Memory Error

Hi

I don't know if what you describe is a known problem, and I have never used NT 4. but... Have you tried reducing the number of items that load when Windows starts?

Another thing to try is testing your RAM to make sure it's OK. Have you run any third party utilities to check the registry and Windows in general? Also, have you considered increasing the RAM?

Hope this helps

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by paul@pvc In reply to

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate any help. :^)

There are few items that startup and the baseline RAM consumption of the 255 available, with File caching, is about 86 MB (1/3 total) and has been that way since I first configured the machine. In general Task Manager reports that memory consumed levels never pass 160 MBs or the 2/3 mark of real RAM at any time with applications running, and that is out of the 549 MBs of total virtual memory (again including file caching), so its not running out of memory per say.

Yes the RAM checks out and the service pack 6a was re-intstalled and the registery cleaning did a check as well.

The five hints at the problem are that its almost for certain happens if I leave the dial-up connection to the internet long enough (even if I walk away from the machine and do not have even a browser loaded)... that when the problem happens Exporer (not ie) has to killed if I try to log in and out.... that mapmem (which squeezes RAM resident blocks to virtual disk) tends to reduce the problem frequency... that this is a fairly new problem that is getting worse... and although there was tons of virus'es and spyware on the system months ago, there is none now.

I would like to guess that a virus or removed piece of spyware left a problem somewhere, but I do not know what to look for. First time I cleaned the system of viruses and spyware I had a problem left over by winsock and had to download a program to uncorrupt it called LSPFix.exe. But this problem with memory predates all of that.

More help needed. :^)

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by paul@pvc In reply to Cut Paste Memory Error

A week or so ago, I added a general security patch from Microsoft that covers many windows OS'es.

The patch is KB824146. Since I added the patch the problem has not happened, or I have not noticed it.

The nature of the patch is to protect and open RPC service through a port. So there are obviously programs out there looking for that service to attack, which explains why the longer I was longed into the internet, the higher the probability this hole was attacked.

Just to be clear, spyware and virus progams do not notice any of this, so nothing long term and resident is ever (apparently) left on the host machine. It just starts services that eat up you memory in a way that task manager cannot really see.

Highly recommended you look into this security issue on your own machine....

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Recommend ZoneAlarm firewall software

by ihatebill In reply to

Glad you seem to have found the solution. Running a good software firewall like ZoneAlarm should prevent this in the future, if you are in a work environment that allows such things.

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