Windows 8.1 low memory errors and pagefile spikes

[Consumer]

Hi,

I've been dealing with an annoying issue for several months now that coincides with the upgrade to Windows 8.1, though I cannot confirm that it was nonexistent in Windows 8.0. When using intensive programs, 3D/video editing and games and such, Windows will eventually bring up a "low memory" error prompting me to close the program. With DirectX applications, namely games, DirectX crashes will occasionally accompany these errors, reporting CreateTexture2D failure. Typically the Windows error dialog can be ignored for a while.

My computer is:
ASRock Z77
700W PSU
i5 4670
8GB 1600MHz
GTX 770M 2GB

8GB memory as mentioned and I'm not planning on bumping it up for this problem considering my suspicions the problem would persist. 2GB VRAM should also be plenty for my uses, as I have monitored constant underusage. I have already tried several different things, including setting static pagefile at 8 or 16GB (as well as off, in the intermediate between resetting the pagefile to defragment it, for those who may still support disabling it), underclocking/undervolting GPU and undoing overclocks, disabling hyperthreading, and running applications in 32-bit where applicable. Plenty more attempted solutions that I've attempted over the months that I can't remember from the top of my head.

However, I noticed recently that MSI Afterburner reported these errors and crashes were brought upon by an erratic spike in pagefile usage followed by an immediate drop back down the regular usage.

Despite the jump to 24GB, I believe both of these instances were using either a 8GB or 16GB fixed pagefile, though this occurs just as frequently with a dynamically-sized one.

Any ideas? This is driving me crazy!

[Geek-9pm]

This is not a cure, ,but a diagnostic method.
You system is basically stable. -Right?
You have backups of important stuff. -Right?
Do this. Partition the hard drive so you can have another OS. Likely you have an old OS lyou can use on that computer. You don't need a lot of space. about 20GB 25 GB  is enough for test. Install the older OS. Expect it to mess up your windows 8 install, but you can repair  Woodwinds 8 after the install of the older system.
You will end up with a dual boot. Windows 8 has a nice visual  boot screen, windows 7 does not. So at this point you can boot into either system and compare performance and issues.
If you still get errors, assume that you hardware has gone bad and it was not Windows 8 that brought on the trouble.

Yes, this takes time, but it is not rocket science. Doing a dual-boot install is not so hard. It gives you a simple way to determine if the fault is with the OS and not the hardware. And it gives you a perspective about the behavior  of either OS.

EDIT: Windows 8.1 can run inside of 1 GB says MS. So you can try removing some sticks and see what happens.

[BC_Programmer]

Afterburner doesn't look particularly useful in this regard.

You can use a more full-featured tool such as Process Explorer. It shows much of the same information but can do so at the process level; the idea here being to figure out which processes are using that memory.

Based on the incomplete information MSI Afterburner shows, It looks like a memory leak- a process will continue to make allocations until an allocation fails- at which point said process will crash.

Monitoring the various Memory-related values in Process explorer could help find the culprit.

I suspect svchost.exe (or possibly dllhost.dll); my reasoning is that a Crashing application would normally show the standard "<program> has stopped working" error, but if that process is a service no such error would appear- in fact, in the case of a service, the Service Control Manager will automatically restart said service.

[Consumer]

Geek-9pm, thanks. I do indeed have a Windows 7 and XP disc on hand. I'll get it installed as soon as I have a chunk of time where I don't need my computer for work and can risk issues cropping up. Sorry I won't be able to do it sooner, since the process and potential complications (considering I still find myself fumbling with unfamiliar changes in Windows 8 ) has deterred me a little from testing another OS in a dual boot or reverting to 8.0.

BC_Programmer, yeah, Afterburner isn't too detailed and I do have better tools installed. I didn't really think about hunting down the process since I had attempted to do so earlier while the application was running but I suppose I wasn't expecting memory spikes rather than a gradual memory leak. Afterburner was simply the only thing I had conveniently open that showed this, since the Task Manager showed normal-looking usage. Next time I run said intensive programs for a decent length of time, I'll be sure to keep up Process Explorer too and get back immediately with results from this, though your prediction and explanation sounds plausible.

Many thanks to you both! Sorry that this is simply acknowledgement and gratitude of your posts; I'll actually get on it as soon as possible.

[Consumer]

Noticed unnecessarily large amounts of memory committed by svchost at the peak of spikes, as you predicted. I don't have any screen caps of it, but that led me to find very similar incidents that still seem unsolved for the original posters. They noted these errors occur especially in Windows 8.1 and only in full screen--and, indeed, after halting full screen use/features or switching to windowed/borderless, svchost.exe stops acting up.

Related post + similar results as mine among a few others I've read: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1225941

Presumably this does not occur for all 8.1 users, so I'll see if I can this time note which services were being run by the process or more exactly what is allocating all that memory. I don't think I need to investigate under other OSes to troubleshoot my hardware under these circumstances, although I intend to clean install Windows (8, 8.1) in the future to see what changes.

[BC_Programmer]

This issue is triggered when the resolution in which the games are being played differs from the resolution configured on Windows.
If you are playing a game, say, in 1366x768, you need to change the system resolution to the same 1366x768 BEFORE opening the game. That will stop the excessive memory consumption and you'll be able to play the game fine.

(From the Microsoft Answer's thread linked on a post in the thread you linked)

[Consumer]

Just a quick note, though I don't have any further progress: no worries, I've already seen that resolution mismatch fix crop up in my search prior to posting this thread. It appears to be a separate issue to which that is a valid workaround with certain Intel drivers, or the like. I'm not sure if it affects me or not, but I run all my programs at native resolution, anyways. Though, perhaps it isn't as separate as I may imagine it to be.

[PanzerIV88]

*censored*! I have the EXACT same issue on my Windows 8.1 64bit system since a week. It started absolutely out of nowhere. I can run Heaven benchmark without problem but if I play BF4 even though I have 8Gb and had a fixed pagefile on a separate hard drive, of 2Gb.. Afterburner would keep reporting almost 10Gb of "Ram+Pagefile" use and it seems like if it exceed 10Gb then I get that crash with the same error, wether I run in Crossfire "R9 280X" or not.

It's very annoying, I never had this before when I had a SLI of GTX670 and the first week I had my new 280X I didn't have any issues too. The game only use 2Gb of Vram out of 3. Seems like there's just a leak for no reason.