[Flipside]

While searching for reasons why my FS2 crashes without any reason every so often, with no visible cause, not even targetting something, I spotted this in a file just called 'fs' as part of the bootup log.

WARNING: VRAM is at -3145728 instead of zero after flushing!

Considering my Hard Drive is often very active when this crash happens, I wonder if this is anything to do with it?

Flipside

[CP5670]

How big is your swap file? In the last few weeks I have also been encountering a memory related, sudden, seemingly random CTD in some of my missions, although it does give the error message "out of memory" along with the call stack stuff. I can find the incident in errorlog.txt from the date, but there is no mention of any vram thing.

I have 512mb physical RAM and an equally large swap file, and the only background programs running are explorer and systray (this is WinME); I would have thought that this should be enough, and it was enough until one of the more recent versions (perhaps one of the 3.55 offshoots), whereupon the memory usage seemed to increase something like tenfold.

Also, since version 3.55 onward I cannot run both fs2_open and fred2_open simultaneously (one always gives a memory error), something I had no problem with in earlier versions. It's rather inconvenient since I keep having to close the game to make any changes in my missions while debugging them.

I know it has been remarked several times around here that fs2_open (the 12_05_2003 build) is using up way too much memory, much more so than it did before. If any of you SCP guys see read this, are there any plans to fix this memory issue during the current "code freeze" stage? The in-mission crashes (without an error; e.g. the targeting bug) seem to be gone at least for me, so this is the most pressing problem now.

[Bobboau]

vram probly means video ram

[Johnmike]

...First of all, why the hell are you using ME.  Get 98SE if you prefer ME to XP.  ME = unstable

Secondly.  Memory, video memory, virtual memory.  I assume you know what they are.  Virtual memory is the swap file.   What exactly FS2 does when it flushes caches and stuff, I don't know.  But check your virtual memory settings.  This could be an ME bug, but try this.  Set your virtual memory minimum and maximum to 1024, one gig.  

If you know how, don't read any further.

From the desktop.  My computer, control panel, system.  Performance tab.  Virtual memory button.  Let me specify my own settings bullet.  

Minimum should be 1024.
Maximum should be 1024.

Make sure it's not -1024, since it sometimes does that if you set it by pressing the up and down scroll buttons to increase and decrease the number.  Press OK.  It'll probably say that "ONO tis iz teh NOT reccomended!11oen."  Just say you want to do it.  Reboot.  Be happy.

[ChronoReverse]

Actually, you don't understand the problem.  The problem is that FSO has been using a LOT of memory recently.

The original post was just something that may or may not be a clue to why it's like that.

Frankly, tracking down a memory leak is just insanely time-consuming.  More likely than not, someone else will be poking around one day and suddenly notice what the problem was (despite the coders spending hours and hours trying to track it down and failing).

[CP5670]

vram probly means video ram

oh never mind then; I thought the v was for virtual.

...First of all, why the hell are you using ME. Get 98SE if you prefer ME to XP. ME = unstable

I actually used that since it came with my computer and I didn't have anything else handy when I had to replace the hard drive two months ago. But really, for all I have heard about ME being bad and everything, I have had a pretty good experience with it compared to the other windows versions. With appropriate tweaking, the startup times and interface are significantly faster than XP, there are none of the spontaneous freeze ups that were common with 98se and for two years, it could run legacy DOS games perfectly (it can't do that now since I was forced to change the mobo along with the hard drive, which seems to be having problems with the SB16 emulation).

Secondly. Memory, video memory, virtual memory. I assume you know what they are. Virtual memory is the swap file. What exactly FS2 does when it flushes caches and stuff, I don't know. But check your virtual memory settings. This could be an ME bug, but try this. Set your virtual memory minimum and maximum to 1024, one gig.

I tried a couple different settings for the swap file size but that didn't appear to have any effect. I usually have it set to a constant 512, but the crashes kept occuring with the settings on 768 and 1024. As ChronoReverse said, it has something to do with recent versions of fs2_open using far more memory than they should be.

[Kosh]

It could also not be calculating the amount of virtual memory it has correctly. Tried running scandisk?

But really, for all I have heard about ME being bad and everything, I have had a pretty good experience with it compared to the other windows versions.

ME crashed more for me than 95 and 3.1 put together.

[Flipside]

Well, I'm running mine on XP with 768 Meg of onboard Memory and plenty of virtual mem (about 2 gig if I remember rightly, I'll check when I get home), the Graphics card has 64 Meg of onboard.