PoolMon on Win2k locks up - any alternatives?

[tbone]

If I run poolmon right after login, it seems ok for a while. Then as I
start up my usual applications, eventually it seems to freeze the
system up, i.e. TaskMon and PerfMon both stop updating and the mouse
barely responds. After experimenting, I've found that I can kill the
console window it's running in (with careful and deliberate mouse
movement) and the system returns to normal.

I'm trying to track down something that seems to use up some resource
after about a day or so. Usually, Kerio (my firewall) starts
complaining of an insufficient resource, and soon after everything
else goes down the drain too. Sometimes if I close everything fast
enough, I can restart gracefully.

I was getting BSODs until I uninstalled WireShark/WinPCap; now I'm
back to running out of resources. I've updated my NetGear GA311 NIC
drivers, switched NICs (back to onboard 100Mbps), applied an update to
NetBT.sys, removed a 1GB memory add-on, all to no avail. I run TaskMon
and PerfMon all the time, and I don't see anything unusual (but I'm
not an expert in this; I just like to have my finger on the machine's
pulse).

I used gflags to turn on just pool tagging.

Once before when I tried poolmon, it started up but the console window
went totally black after the barest blip of the white on blue column
headings.

So, any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks
tbone

 

[tbone]

Re: PoolMon on Win2k locks up - any alternatives?

More info below...

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:03:37 -0400, tbone <noneedto@email.me> wrote:

>If I run poolmon right after login, it seems ok for a while. Then as I
>start up my usual applications, eventually it seems to freeze the
>system up, i.e. TaskMon and PerfMon both stop updating and the mouse
>barely responds. After experimenting, I've found that I can kill the
>console window it's running in (with careful and deliberate mouse
>movement) and the system returns to normal.
>
>I'm trying to track down something that seems to use up some resource
>after about a day or so. Usually, Kerio (my firewall) starts
>complaining of an insufficient resource, and soon after everything
>else goes down the drain too. Sometimes if I close everything fast
>enough, I can restart gracefully.
>
>I was getting BSODs until I uninstalled WireShark/WinPCap; now I'm
>back to running out of resources. I've updated my NetGear GA311 NIC
>drivers, switched NICs (back to onboard 100Mbps), applied an update to
>NetBT.sys, removed a 1GB memory add-on, all to no avail. I run TaskMon
>and PerfMon all the time, and I don't see anything unusual (but I'm
>not an expert in this; I just like to have my finger on the machine's
>pulse).
>
>I used gflags to turn on just pool tagging.
>
>Once before when I tried poolmon, it started up but the console window
>went totally black after the barest blip of the white on blue column
>headings.
>
>So, any ideas/suggestions?
>
>Thanks
>tbone

Some further experimentation and information:

If I set the console window to LOW priority in TaskMon before I run
PoolMon, then it doesn't lock up the system, but it still doesn't
work. I neglected to mention earlier that the headings come out; just
the details don't show. I'm now thinking there are too many items for
PoolMon to grapple with.

One program I was running seemed to be creeping up in Non-paged Pool
allocations. I only watched it for a few minutes, but it didn't look
like it was backing down at all, just slowly going up, so I shut it
down. The NP count in PoolMon (the next time I started it) did not go
down any, while paged pool was up some. Here are the current totals:

Memory: 2096600K Avail: 1157520K PageFlts:10326576 ...
... InRam Krnl:19692K P:16879
Commit: 842684K Limit:4394136K Peak: 849848K...
...Pool N:32208K P:175700K

I have 2GB RAM; is 32MB of NP and 174MB of paged excessive? I
typically have 20+ apps open at a time.

I believe I have tried not running the program in previous
experiments, without that making any difference, but perhaps there
were confusing factors. I will continue running without it and
watching the NP pool...

tbone

 

[John John]

Re: PoolMon on Win2k locks up - any alternatives?

tbone wrote:

> More info below...
>
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:03:37 -0400, tbone <noneedto@email.me> wrote:
>
>
>>If I run poolmon right after login, it seems ok for a while. Then as I
>>start up my usual applications, eventually it seems to freeze the
>>system up, i.e. TaskMon and PerfMon both stop updating and the mouse
>>barely responds. After experimenting, I've found that I can kill the
>>console window it's running in (with careful and deliberate mouse
>>movement) and the system returns to normal.
>>
>>I'm trying to track down something that seems to use up some resource
>>after about a day or so. Usually, Kerio (my firewall) starts
>>complaining of an insufficient resource, and soon after everything
>>else goes down the drain too. Sometimes if I close everything fast
>>enough, I can restart gracefully.
>>
>>I was getting BSODs until I uninstalled WireShark/WinPCap; now I'm
>>back to running out of resources. I've updated my NetGear GA311 NIC
>>drivers, switched NICs (back to onboard 100Mbps), applied an update to
>>NetBT.sys, removed a 1GB memory add-on, all to no avail. I run TaskMon
>>and PerfMon all the time, and I don't see anything unusual (but I'm
>>not an expert in this; I just like to have my finger on the machine's
>>pulse).
>>
>>I used gflags to turn on just pool tagging.
>>
>>Once before when I tried poolmon, it started up but the console window
>>went totally black after the barest blip of the white on blue column
>>headings.
>>
>>So, any ideas/suggestions?
>>
>>Thanks
>>tbone
>
>
> Some further experimentation and information:
>
> If I set the console window to LOW priority in TaskMon before I run
> PoolMon, then it doesn't lock up the system, but it still doesn't
> work. I neglected to mention earlier that the headings come out; just
> the details don't show. I'm now thinking there are too many items for
> PoolMon to grapple with.
>
> One program I was running seemed to be creeping up in Non-paged Pool
> allocations. I only watched it for a few minutes, but it didn't look
> like it was backing down at all, just slowly going up, so I shut it
> down. The NP count in PoolMon (the next time I started it) did not go
> down any, while paged pool was up some. Here are the current totals:
>
> Memory: 2096600K Avail: 1157520K PageFlts:10326576 ...
> ... InRam Krnl:19692K P:16879
> Commit: 842684K Limit:4394136K Peak: 849848K...
> ...Pool N:32208K P:175700K
>
> I have 2GB RAM; is 32MB of NP and 174MB of paged excessive? I
> typically have 20+ apps open at a time.
>
> I believe I have tried not running the program in previous
> experiments, without that making any difference, but perhaps there
> were confusing factors. I will continue running without it and
> watching the NP pool...

Taskmon is a Windows 9x utility. Ditch it, many of the utilities
designed to work on W9x don't work properly on NT systems.

John