I have just run into a problem with low memory. My windows system is complaining that camb_2.16_windows_intel86.exe has caused the system to run low on memory. My system is Windows Vista, with 3GB memory and I run Cosmology, Enigma and Seti projects and nothing else.

The message in the system log is:

Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition. The following programs consumed the most virtual memory: camb_2.16_windows_intelx86.exe (4552) consumed 705912832 bytes, htcUPCTLoader.exe (5448) consumed 223764480 bytes, and sdclt.exe (4544) consumed 170799104 bytes.

I have had to reboot the machine and cosmology then showed 'computation error' before downloading a new task.

Is this task related and just a one off or is there a problem with the program?

Regards
Mike

That amount of memory consumption is normal for Cosmology@home. Since I see that your computer is using a Northwood core based on your computer's processor listing in your profile, I would say that Cosmology@home is not a good fit for your computer due to its high memory usage. I would list 64-bit Windows 7 and at least 4GB of memory as my recommended minimum specifications as a fellow cruncher.

Hi Mike,
I run C@H on a 32bit Vista having 2GB without problems.
I did experience your problem when 'Windows Update' required about 1GB on top of everything else. Note that the message is low VIRTUAL storage. I upped my swap file to 4GB and haven't had the problem since then :-)

Task status says "Waiting for memory" at 74.523% complete. What does this mean & is there anything I should do about it?

What are the memory settings you have set in BOINC manager? Under the computing preferences you should have a disk and memory tab. What do you have for the settings for memory? If you computer runs low on memory, it will pause the work unit until enough is freed up. If you have the setting for "When computer is in use, use at most" to a low number, this would be an easy solution to raise the amount. If it is set at 100%, then you need to give us more details on your system and what all you have running.

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Thanks for the idea, but whatever it was "waiting" for seems to have resolved itself without any changes. CAMB 2.16 Status now "Running" at 94.746% on Win10 with hundreds of GB more than necessary, at 50% in use & 90% idle.

Thanks for the idea, but whatever it was "waiting" for seems to have resolved itself without any changes. CAMB 2.16 Status now "Running" at 94.746% on Win10 with hundreds of GB more than necessary, at 50% in use & 90% idle.

When you say hundreds of GB more than necessary, are you talking Hard Drive space (virtual memory) or are you referencing RAM? The settings we are talking about are for RAM in this case. I don't believe the BOINC settings for memory are looking at virtual memory. I could be wrong though.

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I JUST checked status of wu's and under status coulumb all jobs say "suspended user request". I have 65 jobs on hold and I did not request it, what is going on? Am dead in the water.

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I JUST checked status of wu's and under status coulumb all jobs say "suspended user request". I have 65 jobs on hold and I did not request it, what is going on? Am dead in the water.

Hi Cheryl, does restarting BOINC, or even rebooting your computer help? Is "suspended user request" all it says, or is it like "Uploading (suspended user request)" or anything like that?

Rebooting or restarting BOINC won't help here.
Instead, try this first: right click on the BOINC icon in the system tray (next to the clock), is there a checkmark on Snooze? If so, uncheck it.

Else open BOINC Manager, (View, Advanced view), Activity, if these are set to any other than "based on preferences", change to "based on preferences".

If it says specifically "Task suspended by user, select all tasks that say this (hold down Shift or CTRL, while clicking all tasks stating this) and click the Resume button. The Suspend/Resume button always shows the option you have, not the state it's in.

If it fixed itself in the mean time, it was Snooze. Snooze only suspends everything for an hour, after that it'll continue.

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I saw this problem on one of my systems 4 processors, no hyperthreads and 6GB memory. I have just upgraded another system to an 8 processor, 16 threads with 16GB of memory and currently have 3 WUs sitting in the waitung for memory state, What I find annoying is when memory does become available many of the WUs that are over 90% complete drop back to 60%, sit there for a while before returning to somewhere close to where they had been. It seems very strange programming that the WU has to drop back to, presumably, some checkpoint and go from there when all it is doing is asking for memory.

Most of the time this system is not in use and I have memory set to 90% for this case. Looking at the memory usage of the 16 threads running C@H the average looks to be around 700MB, so that makes around 11GB in total. Task manager shows that I have 2GB free memory, so don't understand why I see WUs in the wiat for memory state.