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Out oF Memory surprise


hjwalter

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After many years of a smooth running FS9 (Win7 64bit, 2x500Gb SSDs in RAID 0, 32Gb RAM) with very many addons and still counting, I very unexpectedly got hit by my first OOM ever. Did a lot of forum reading on the subject and disabled all my latest scenery addons but to no avail.

I then Googled the subject and got some answers about a registry edit as follows:

 

Do a registry search for "sharedsection", which turns up a total of three separate entries, each with values of "1024,20480,768" in it's string. The advice is to increase the "768" value but by how much is not given.

 

I'm very nervous about even looking at my registry, let alone editing it, so my initial question is if any of you experts have any experience with this "768" value and if increasing it will actually kill my OOM error.

 

It normally takes about 15 - 20 minutes while parked on any of my four different (test) airports before the OOM occurs and about five minutes longer after a "C disk cleanup" was made. Different aircraft, no difference.

 

Very thankful for any advice.

 

Hans

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It normally takes about 15 - 20 minutes while parked on any of my four different (test) airports before the OOM occurs and about five minutes longer after a "C disk cleanup" was made.

 

The registry hack can be ignored, from your above comment you're running out of empty disk space for FS9 to use as Virtual Memory through the Windows paging file.

I would advise a back-up of all unused aircraft and scenery, then delete them from your hard drive(s) to free up more empty disk space.

Tim Wright "The older I get, the better I was..."

Xbox Series X, Asus Prime H510M-K, Intel Core i5-11400F 4.40GHz, 16Gb DDR4 3200, 2TB WD Black NVME SSD, 1TB Samsung SATA SSD

NVidia RTX3060 Ti 8Gb, Logitech Flight Yoke System, CH Pro Pedals, Acer K272HL 27", Windows 11 Home x64

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I agree with Tim, it's likely disk space. The "virtual memory" that lets you use a LOT more memory than you have RAM needs a lot of empty disk space -- 20% free space on the disk (if it's large) is getting a tad thin, and you're likely to see performance problems before you hit OOM if you're under 30% (perhaps higher percentage if it's a small disk).

 

You don't notice this most of the time with other programs because they aren't as resource intensive as FS, but they, too, will use disk space to overflow RAM. And that "virtual memory" is a part of the reason (not all, though) that certain areas of sim operation gain speed with solid state "disks."

 

Backing up your unused add-ons and either removing them or moving them to another disk is a good start to remedy this, but you can actually put scenery and some other stuff on another disk and, with certain config changes, run it from there, leaving more space on your C: drive which is the most critical.

 

Larry N.

As Skylab would say:

Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science!

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Thanks for your replies Tim and Larry,

 

As a result of both your comments I must firstly eleborate more on my existing drive setup, the main reason being that I had grossly underestimated the problem.

 

My C drive consists of two separate SSDs, which are set up in a RAID-0 configuration. Total size = 212Gb with free space = 125Gb. This drive is reserved for my Win7 64bit only.

 

My D drive is a single physical SSD of size = 465Gb, with free space = 289Gb. This drive contains my "Microsoft Games" folder, which in turn contains FS2004 itself and a whole lot of related/supporting software. Has worked totally problem free for many years.

 

My first question is then: Do both these drives need a separate virtual memory or is my OOM problem a Win7 only issue for my drive "C" ? In this respect I seem to have ample room for large and fast virtual memory files on both drives, both of which now have "System managed" page files. I assume that a "page" file is the same as a "virtual memory" file. My "total paging file size for all drives is 65433Mb" according to my "Advanced performance options" window.

 

As I'm watching my Windows Task Manager screen, while sitting on any active airport with any flyable aircraft, I see that the CPU usage remains steady at around 12%, while the memory usage very slowly creeps up untill 4.80Gb and then BANG, another OOM.

 

I have two no longer used HDs lying around and any one of these can be activated as "E" drive, without too much trouble, possibly for transferring, e.g. my whole scenery folder, to. Only problem will then be to somehow tell my FS2004 to retrieve scenery files from "E" instead of "D" and that is something which cannot simply be edited in the scenery.cfg file.

 

More comments/advice please.

 

Regards

 

Hans

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OK, it appears you have a decent disk layout, and with 65 GB of paging space your virtual, in and of itself, isn't a problem. Since 4.8GB is when you hit the OOM, it might be virtual memory allocated for the sim, but not overall VM available. How much physical RAM do you have on your system?

 

My C drive consists of two separate SSDs, which are set up in a RAID-0 configuration. Total size = 212Gb with free space = 125Gb. This drive is reserved for my Win7 64bit only.

 

So this is a pair of 225 GB SSDs in RAID-0? Of course they'll look like a single disk to the system, so you have a total disk space of 212 GB and 125 GB available still, more than adequate for the system 7. And your D: drive looks equally OK.

 

So at this point nothing is obvious to me (perhaps to Tim?), so maybe someone else has a thought -- one minor thought DOES occur to me, in that I vaguely recall a 3GB or 4GB limit on some old software, but I'm having a senior moment (or three) right now and can't recall the details.

 

Larry N.

As Skylab would say:

Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science!

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Hans, I think Larry has hit the nail on the head - this could be a memory limitation of FS9.exe if you haven't already applied the 4gb Patch. It's available from here: https://www.exefiles.com/en/exe/4gb-patch-exe/

Tim Wright "The older I get, the better I was..."

Xbox Series X, Asus Prime H510M-K, Intel Core i5-11400F 4.40GHz, 16Gb DDR4 3200, 2TB WD Black NVME SSD, 1TB Samsung SATA SSD

NVidia RTX3060 Ti 8Gb, Logitech Flight Yoke System, CH Pro Pedals, Acer K272HL 27", Windows 11 Home x64

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Larry,

 

To answer your question about how much RAM I have: I have 32Gb of RAM ..... and ..... 860 scenery layers.

 

Tim,

 

I've installed and used the 4Gb patch quite some years ago but in the meantime have also, for various reasons, replaced the FS9.exe from backups. It may therefore be possible that I've inadvertedly replaced it with an old non-patched version. Anyway, a very good suggestion and I'll certainly try the newly downloaded patch tomorrow.

 

I'll also de-activate all the (test) airport sceneries I've been using, in my scenery.cfg file, together with the most recently installed ones, to see if that makes any difference. Not only that but I'll also "go to" a still default airport somewhere on the other side of the planet to see if OOMs are also lurking around there.

 

I will report my findings in this thread.

 

Regards

 

Hans

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To answer your question about how much RAM I have: I have 32Gb of RAM .....

Well, with the other specs you mentioned, your system is adequate many times over, so it has to be something in the installation -- hope your latest try cures it.

 

Larry N.

As Skylab would say:

Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science!

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Hi all,

 

Thanks for all your suggestions, during the past weekend I've tried all of them, sadly without anything which even resembles success. Not only that but during the long tedious waits for the now inevitable OOMs to appear, I've been scouring the internet for answers as well, with the most promising what defaid in fact also points out, e.g. an empty texture folder somewhere. However, no empty texture folders were found anywhere within my FS9.

 

I've also de-activated all recently installed sceneries in turn but to no avail. I also began suspecting the test aircraft I had been using in each such scenery tests but even with de default Cessna my now dreaded OOMs just keep occurring.

 

There's also some talk about a "MFC70.DLL" file which should be present, not only within the FS9 main folder, but also in two different places within Win7 itself. However, I can only find the one within the main FS9 folder but replacing it with any newly downloaded version is for me, like shooting in the dark and never knowing what (delayed) damage it could cause.

 

In the meantime I've reached the conclusion that my OOMs are not caused by a shortage of RAM or virtual memory but there seems to be a slowly filling up bucket somewhere, which as soon as it overflows, causes the OOM.

 

Any more ideas anyone ..... please.

 

Hans

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I've also de-activated all recently installed sceneries in turn but to no avail.

 

Eventually you should try to deactivate ALL sceneries and reactivate them step by step. Best would be to safe the location, where the OOM occured. It's a hard work, I agree. With a scenery tool like 'FS Scenery Manager' or 'Addit Pro!' it could be done much easier. In such cases I usually reactivate the sceneries by packages of several dozen entries at once.

 

Bernard

 

 

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Bernard,

 

Thanks for your suggestion and it's in fact the very last thing I have left to try because I'm now slowly but surely running out of options.

 

In the meantime I've been shooting in the dark with more try-outs found on the internet but without really hitting anything. However, some things did seem to move every now and then, e.g. because the filling up of my RAM either went more slowly or even (temporarily) became stable but alas, after waiting for the now more or less standard hour ..... again, (B)OOM !

 

I've also (test-)deleted 14 of my major USA airports to see if that would make any difference but ...... nope, after the standard hour ...... (B)OOM.

 

As you suggest I will now begin to systematically de-activate and re-activate groups of sceneries and in between hope to isolate the one which is causing of my OOMs. If found and if my patience holds out, I will then try to isolate the rougue BGL, etc.

 

I will report back in this thread but, unless I'm very lucky, this could take quite some days.

 

Regards

 

Hans

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Bernard,

 

I've finally mamaged to cure my OOM issue.

 

It was caused by three unrelated Land Class BGL files situated between normal active scenery BGL files belonging to three different airport sceneries. I rooted these out and placed them in my dedicated Land Class folder. End of problem !!

 

The whole issue was extremely tedious but in the end I learnt a lot and especially that Land Class BGL files must never have texture files or be mixed with normal scenery BGL files, which do have directly related texture files. At least, that's the way I now see it.

 

Cheers

 

Hans

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hjwalter, a quick way to deactivate sceneries is to open the scenery config, and working from the bottom up, select about half of the scenery layers and cut/paste them to another text file, save the scenery.cfg and start fs9. if problem persists then repeat with another half of the remaining sceneries so on and so forth. way faster than deselecting one by one in the scenery menu. if problem goes away then start adding back layers by half of the last half you removed, eventually you will narrow down to the offending scenery

- bernie

p.s. no need to call me Capt folks, Capt Flappers is just a name my wife teases me with because of my flight sim obsession. :o

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Capt_Flappers, that might a makeable solution but IMO a bit confusing while managing more then sixteen hundred entries. Therefore I rather would suggest to use a tool like Addit! Pro. Ii's payware but definitely worth the money.

 

51538665130_e3f4255efb_c.jpg

 

Clicking on squares would certainly be easier than rename the scenery.cfg entries with 'FALSE' and 'TRUE'. Of course, everybody has its own system, and I respect any other suggestions.

 

Bernard

 

 

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Bernard,

 

I've finally mamaged to cure my OOM issue.

 

It was caused by three unrelated Land Class BGL files situated between normal active scenery BGL files belonging to three different airport sceneries. I rooted these out and placed them in my dedicated Land Class folder. End of problem !!

 

The whole issue was extremely tedious but in the end I learnt a lot and especially that Land Class BGL files must never have texture files or be mixed with normal scenery BGL files, which do have directly related texture files. At least, that's the way I now see it.

 

Cheers

 

Hans

 

I'm glad to know you've found the problem, and it's taught me something too.

 

It ties in with the general advice concerning empty texture folders, and to be honest is something I should have thought of. As I understand it, BGLs requiring a texture file initially direct the search to the local /Texture/ folder and, if there's no suitable tx there, will extend the search to other folders as necessary.

 

The empty texture folder issue relates to landclass: apparently there's a bug in the landclass implementation that prevents the extended search and keeps opening new instances of the search in the local folder, tying up an increasing amount of memory. If there's no local /Texture/ folder for a landclass scenery layer, the search starts elsewhere, circumventing the bug.

 

It hadn't occurred to me that the same mechanism would use up memory if a landclass BGL was in an ordinary scenery layer with a populated /Texture/ folder.

 

I'd read about the LC search bug, and about the empty folder thing and knew that LC needs to be in a separate layer but putting them all together was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me...

 

Live and learn. :)

Edited by defaid
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Capt_Flappers, that might a makeable solution but IMO a bit confusing while managing more then sixteen hundred entries. Therefore I rather would suggest to use a tool like Addit! Pro. Ii's payware but definitely worth the money.

 

51538665130_e3f4255efb_c.jpg

 

Clicking on squares would certainly be easier than rename the scenery.cfg entries with 'FALSE' and 'TRUE'. Of course, everybody has its own system, and I respect any other suggestions.

 

Bernard

 

i don't change scenery layers from true to false, i hold left left click on mouse while i scroll up until i see i'm about halfway up the file, stop at an [Area.***] and then cut that out of the scenery cfg and paste it to a separate text file. wayyyyy quicker than clicking on squares, just always work from bottom to top in the scenery cfg, and top to bottom in the separate text file. i never said anything about changeing scenery from true to false or vice versa. cut n paste baby

- bernie

p.s. no need to call me Capt folks, Capt Flappers is just a name my wife teases me with because of my flight sim obsession. :o

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Defaid,

 

Thanks for your detailed explanation about how LC files behave when they have access to scenery texture files. However, my folders containing these texture files were not empty and by the look of things it seems that my system just kept going into loops of some sort because my CPU was running at 100% of it's capacity, while I was just sitting in my parked plane on my (test) airport while waiting for the next OOM. My AI activity set at zero % and my total memory contents never exceded 10%.

 

In the end though, I remain very happy that the above mentioned loops did not cause any unpredicatble kinds of damage to my files.

 

Regards and long live FS9 !!

 

Hans

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Hi,

 

I have a friend who's computer acts the same way - OOM error when a LC file is in a folder with a texture folder, empty or not. In contrast, I can do that and no problems. So it appears to be computer specific (in some way). He just goes through any new scenery addon and moves the LC files to a separate Landclass Files folder, without a texture subfolder.

Tom Gibson

 

CalClassic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.com

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However, my folders containing these texture files were not empty and by the look of things it seems that my system just kept going into loops of some sort because my CPU was running at 100% of it's capacity...

 

Hi Hans.

 

That's exactly what the landclass bug is described as doing. I guess I didn't explain it correctly.

 

It doesn't necessarily need an empty texture folder: it just has to fail to find the correct texture in the local /Texture/ folder. That's the part that had escaped my understanding.

 

I think that in your case, the landclass bgl was in one scenery layer but the associated texture file was probably in another layer or in the FS2004/Textures/ folder and that triggered the bug.

 

***

 

Hi Tom.

 

I don't think I've ever had a file & folder structure that could trigger the bug but it may be that my PC is also immune. I think I'll experiment this evening by adding a Texture folder to one of my LC layers, with and without contents. If my patience allows, I'll also move a LC bgl into a standard scenery layer and see what that does.

 

D

Edited by defaid
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