[SOLVED] HostMemoryLow even though I have > 10 GB available

[rsman]

Hello,

I am getting HostMemoryLow errors when I try to run a guest with more than 2.5 GB RAM. My machine is a Core I7 3770 with 16 GB RAM running Windows 7 X64. I have tried to run a Ubuntu 15.04 64 guest with up to 10 GB free RAM and the problem always happens.

I tried pre-allocating the RAM, and the error changes but still persists. Without pre-allocation I used stress on the guest to fill up the RAM.

I tried running multiple Guests, and all of them have this problem.

I have searched a lot about this problem, and here is some additional information:

- The RAM is 2x8 GB. The problem was happening with only 1x8 GB but doubling it didn't help. The 2 memory chips are identical:

wmic MEMORYCHIP get BankLabel,DeviceLocator,Capacity,Tag

BankLabel Capacity DeviceLocator Tag
BANK 0 8589934592 ChannelA-DIMM0 Physical Memory 0
BANK 2 8589934592 ChannelB-DIMM0 Physical Memory 1

- I don't have GoogleCrashHandler or any other suspicious processes running.

- I have tried using RAMMap to clear cached memory but that didn't solve it either.

I have attached logs of running with and without pre-allocation configured. I tried attaching VBoxStartup.log but the forum doesn't allow me.

Thanks!

[Perryg]

I suspect you have a 3rd part app (on the host) that is preventing VirtualBox from using memory above 2048MB. You can set the guest at 2048MB instead of 3GB and see if it will work and/or find out what is preventing it to function above 2048MB if that allows it to work. Normal suspect was at one time google apps ( don't remember which one ). It would also help if we knew the exact guest you are using. Ubuntu has had a lot of them and some work better than others.

[rsman]

Sorry, It's Ubuntu 15.04 64 bits.

I have tried stopping all Google applications (Chrome, Drive, Updater) but it still doesn't work. I even tried running VirtualBox in Windows safe mode, but I got a driver error, don't know if that is possible.

Thanks!

[mpack]

VirtualBox needs the allocation to be contiguous - so it looks like you have something hogging the middle of your address space.

[rsman]

VirtualBox needs the allocation to be contiguous - so it looks like you have something hogging the middle of your address space.

I used msconfig to start with only the essencial services, using around 2 GB memory, and it still didn't work.

Is there a way to check the memory blocks to see the available contiguous space?

[mpack]

I'm afraid I have no idea - that's a host OS question. I'd Google for "Windows memory map" or similar.

When I've seen this before it was because a large app of some kind (e.g. some big A/V task) was being loaded before some drivers etc, and then unloaded itself when the boot was complete, leaving those drivers locked in the middle of the address range. The cure would be to get the non-persisting memory hog to wait until everything else was done before doing its temporary thing.

[ikar.us]

In your logfile I see

Code: Select all

EnablePAE       <integer> = 0x0000000000000000 (0)

I don't really know whether
PAE is still necessary if everything is 64bit anyway,
but in my logfiles it's enabled.

[rsman]

I used RAMMap to check the free blocks, and if I read it correctly when I boot the machine there is a contiguous free space of around 40% of the total, which is around 6 GB. So that probably isn't the issue.

I also tried enabling PAE but that didn't help.

The weird thing is that there is a machine exactly like this one, same hardware and OS, but only 8 GB of memory, and I can boot 4 GB VMs with no problem.

Also, I noticed this problem hapens in Virtual PC too, so it's probably something related to the OS.

I'm thinking about reinstalling Windows and starting over, but that would be my last option.

[mpack]

Perhaps if you made a more detailed comparison of the memory maps between working vs non-working, paying particular attention to differences in the first <4GB region.

[rsman]

I finally found the problem. It was this process called awtask.exe, which is part of a very poorly designed software called Trauma 0 that the company was once using. I removed it and now VMs with 4+ GB RAM work fine.

Thank you all for the help.

[mpack]

Thanks for reporting back with the solution. Were you able to establish the details? I.e. exactly what "awtask.exe" was doing in order to cause problems? You had previously reported that the memory map didn't seem to be amiss.