Low Memory Alarm
This Low Memory alarm is activated when the available memory drops below a threshold. This can result in:
- Applications being unable to secure additional memory.
- New programs being unable to open successfully.
- General performance degradation due to excessive paging.
When this alarm is current you should:
- Look at the Processes page in the Processes drilldown. Check the Mem Usage (MB) column for processes using excessive amounts of memory. You can:
- Close those applications using excessive memory.
- Change the maximum memory usage setting for those applications using excessive memory. Refer to the relevant documentation to find out if this setting is supported by the application.
- Purchase more physical memory for your system.
- Determine if any programs have a memory leak. To do this:
- Restart your machine to ensure fresh memory usage by all applications.
- Use the Microsoft Performance Monitor tool and set the update interval to 10 minutes.
- Add the Working Set Peak counter for all applications from the Process object.
- Leave the application running on the system overnight.
- If there is a memory leak that can be viewed in a day, it will show up with the Working Set Peak graph for one of the applications rising smoothly. If the results are inconclusive after a day, some system applications that have a memory leak may exhibit the behavior over a week or more. Adjust the update interval to accommodate the extended period (update once per hour or more).
Related Topics
Processes Page
Missing Performance Counters Alarm
The Missing Performance Counters alarm becomes active when performance counter data is unavailable. This may occur when:
- The machine is unusually busy, or
- The performance counter has been disabled.
To verify the performance counters are unavailable, run Microsoft Performance Monitor and look for the Memory and Processor performance objects in the Add Counters dialog for the machine being diagnosed. If these objects are not listed then they need to be enabled. To do this, download and install Exctrlst.exe from the Microsoft download site.
Run the utility and do the following:
- Edit the Machine Name to show the name of the machine being diagnosed.
- Click the Refresh button.
- Select Service as the sort order.
- Select PerfOS in the counter list.
- Check the Performance Counters Enabled checkbox if unchecked.
- Repeat steps 4–5 for the PerfDisk, PerfNet and PerfProc counters.
- Restart the machine being diagnosed to enable the counters.
Network Failure Alarm
This alarm becomes active when you lose the Spotlight connection to a machine under diagnosis. This may occur when:
- The network is down (and all open connections are lost), OR
- The remote machine is rebooted, OR
- One of the services required by Spotlight is down.
Look for the following on the machine that has raised the alarm:
- Is the machine running?
- Does it respond to commands?
- Do error messages appear on the screen or in the event logs?
- Can it "ping" other machines successfully?
- Can it access shared folders on the network?
- Are the Remote Procedure Call, Remote Registry and Windows Management Instrumentation services running?
If no problems are found, try to reconnect to the machine via Spotlight.
Page Faults Alarm
This alarm is activated when the number of pages being swapped exceeds a threshold. Sustained high paging rates can adversely effect the performance of a system.
When this alarm is current, you should:
- Look at the Processes page on the Processes drilldown to see which process is causing the paging. Look at the Page Faults/sec column. This will help you determine the cause of paging.
- Look at the Paging chart on the Summary page of the Memory drilldown. This shows how long the high paging has been occurring. Short periods of high paging are acceptable, but if the paging rate is high for a sustained period, there may be a problem with the system.
- Consider adding more physical memory to the system.
- Stop unnecessary services and processes on the system.
Related Topics
Processes Page
Summary Page
