Vista Runs Out of Memory While Copying Files 661
ta bu shi da yu writes "It appears that, incredibly, Vista can run out of memory while copying files. ZDNet is reporting that not only does it run out of memory after copying 16,400+ files, but that 'often there is little indication that file copy operations haven't completed correctly.' Apparently a fix was scheduled for SP1 but didn't make it; there is a hotfix that you must request."
That's OK then (Score:5, Funny)
Billy G says (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Billy G says (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Billy G says (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was also pretty hard to believe MS when they stated that the Mac
Re:Billy G says (Score:5, Informative)
No. That was not the problem. The problem was that DOS programs were 16-bit real mode programs. This means that they used 16-bit pointers to refer to memory locations. This is what limits a DOS program to 1 megabyte of memory, not any deficiency in MS-DOS (which it had many of, admittedly). The segmented perversion of 8086 made things even worse by making memory divided into 64kB chunks rather than contiguous.
In any case, as time went on, most DOS programs did move to next-gen hardware, first by using EMS and XMS memory, and later by using DOS extenders to run in 32-bit protected mode. Having fixed screen memory location was never the problem, quite on contrary: it made it possible to access the video card memory directly from protected mode without having to convert a 16-bit pointer from DOS into 32-bit one.
We are talking about unaccelerated graphics card here. The fastest way to use them was to write directly to memory. Going through a system call would not only have been slower, meaning no one would had used it, but required said operating system to contain some kind of graphics driver, which would had taken up precious memory space and therefore hindered every program.
DOS is perfect for what it's designed for - a filing system for two 360 kB diskettes that takes up little memory and doesn't get in your way, and lets you get your program into the memory. Of course a system resulting from these design parameters doesn't work too well in a modern machine with 500 GB hard disk, gigabytes of memory and a dazzling array of extension cards.
And, frankly, I doubt anyone at either IBM nor Microsoft realized that the IBM PC would still be in use, extended beyond nearly all recognition, 26 years later.
Re:Billy G says (Score:4, Insightful)
Zing!
Re:Billy G says (Score:4, Funny)
Welcome to Windows Vista (Score:5, Funny)
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Cake, and grief counseling. Far more appropriate. I just switched my primary desktop to Vista this past weekend (More a "Why the hell not, gotta learn it to support it -someday-) resignation, and have seen that after it's patched... Vista's still a buggy bastard. I haven't seen Explorer shit itself as frequently as I have this past three days since Windows ME.
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Re:Welcome to Windows Vista (Score:5, Funny)
the cake is a lie
the cake is a lie
Figures... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Vista (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
I have 13K+ music tracks on a backup disk. If I try to copy them with the Explorer UI, it does nothing - No error message or anything. I reverted to Robocopy, which works fine. You must be doing the same thing. Doesn't anyone at Microsoft have a big music collection to copy, or do they just use their Macs and iPods for that?
Copy Music? Never (Score:3, Funny)
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Robocopy is the command line utility from the Win XP resource kit cd, right? That might be good for pros, but I recently found this little utility (free for personal use) called TeraCopy [codesector.com] via Lifehacker. Once installed, this becomes the default copy handler for Windows explorer and does an amazing job. It lets you pause and resume copying, and has error recovery too. It even is smart enough to recognize if I've started a copy operation and then try to copy more fil
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Doing something as simple as using a crossover cable to transfer data between the two turned into a nightmare as the "very intelligent" windows explorer dropped me to under 100K/sec download speeds. I have never seen anything so slow since the 90's.
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but
Cumulative copies! (Score:2)
Then I read it's cumulative between reboots! I can imagine this will hit many servers that have any kind of auto-copy job they do on a schedule.
Re:Cumulative copies! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm a little suspicious (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just wondering if perhaps there isn't more to this than just "OMG Vista runs out of memory!" If it is a memory issue, why then haven't I encountered it, doing far larger amounts of files?
Re:I'm a little suspicious (Score:4, Informative)
Refresh of an oldie... (Score:4, Funny)
In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista PCs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista PC that has run faster than its Mac OSX counterpart, despite the Vista PC's same chip architecture. My 286/12 with 2 megs of ram runs faster than this 2.4ghz mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior operating system.
Vista lovers, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Vista over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
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No, what's really humorous is that the VIRTUALLY EXACT SAME POST (substitute Linux for OSX & OS9, change a couple of the system specs - otherwise identical) was modded flamebait while this was modded informative.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=329765&cid=20999373 [slashdot.org]
Neat, huh? I love consistent moderation! Or perhaps we should ask what that says of /. mods of late? Is Linux (or Ubuntu Linux in particular) on the way out of /. mod's favs - and being replaced with OSX/OS9?
All in all, I think
Off topic (How can you expect consistent moderatio (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you expect consistent moderation? Because of the way the system works, the first mod can effectively hide a post from other modders (yes they advice you to mod at -1 but who does that?) so wether a post gets seen or not depends on who gets to see it first. Mod it down, and it is gone. Mod it up, and more people see it, this includes downward modders but also upward modders, so it totally depends on the first mod.
Then there is the fact that moderation is totally random. So random that sometimes I ge
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No, what's really humorous is that the VIRTUALLY EXACT SAME POST (substitute Linux for OSX & OS9, change a couple of the system specs - otherwise identical) was modded flamebait while this was modded informative.
/. mods of late? Is Linux (or Ubuntu Linux in particular) on the way out of /. mod's favs - and being replaced with OSX/OS9?
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=329765&cid=20999373 [slashdot.org]
Neat, huh? I love consistent moderation! Or perhaps we should ask what that says of
I normally don't feed trolls, but here goes:
The original post (in this thread) was clearly meant as a satire based upon the post that you also dug up. The post is now showing as funny instead of informative, but often you'll find informative or interesting mods on funny posts as an additional satire, which in itself is often quite funny (e.g. seeing a clearly nonsense but otherwise funny post modded as informative is often funny). Regardless, this post is funny, not because of the content alone, but b
Names (Score:3, Insightful)
For those that aren't getting the joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because (Score:5, Funny)
16400+ files ? Let me guess ... (Score:2, Funny)
How much Ram does Vista POS DRM System need?? (Score:2)
Good thing? (Score:2)
Exxon Val-Vista (Score:3, Funny)
It's NEVER too late to UPGRADE to XP !! (Score:2)
What about those of us who need high performance? (Score:3, Funny)
Anybody want to suggest an OS that would work for me? I'm serious.
Is this related to the playing music and network.. (Score:2)
Of course file management is secondary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Same as NT (Score:2)
Amazed (Score:2)
Think of the potential loss of important files just because this thing doesn't report when it fails.
OK 16400 is a lot of files but its not unrealistic number. Just my windows directory alone has about 15800 files (not that I would want to copy it).
I just hope this bug directly adversely affects enough managers that make purchasing decisions to drive a few more to adopt Linux as a company-wide
not 16,400 (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad summery (Score:5, Informative)
FTA:
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Yes, for Vista it has certainly been a bad summery. The forecast for the upcoming wintery doesn't look so good, either.
Pun-ishments aside, those who RATFA know that the fault is in the Vista kernel, it is consistently triggered by Kapersky, but is also triggered by other software, and by implication it is not consistently repeatable and therefore cannot be easily worked around.
On my WinXP home machine, I routinely copy more than 16,400 files when doing a full data backup to an external drive, which I do
Re:Bad summery (Score:5, Informative)
The article does not state clearly wether physical memory is a constraint.
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So the problem is not in the kernel? It's because the OLE chrome doesn't work right with the extended attributes chrome?
And even so, Microsoft can't fix it in SP1?
This news is both strange and disturbing.
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I don't see a problem with KAV here. Surely extended attributes - one of the often mentioned features of NTFS - are meant to be used for file metadata, instead of inconsistent 3rd-party approaches (such as separate databases)? And if so, why KAV shouldn't use it to, for example, save date of las
Not Just Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago, while investigating a similar problem with a production server (a SERVER not a client machine) the machine would gradually grind to a halt doing the copy, while still responding (but slowly) to other operations.
I found that the "copy" command did much better than a drag and drop operation, but still would have a problem eventually. Finally, I found that this was a known problem, and that to solve it, a dedicated MS employee had written a utility called "robocopy" the "robo" not being for "robot", but for "robust" (really, it said that!).
Using that usually got the job done, much more slowly than it should have, but at least I didn't have to re-boot the machine daily to clear things up.
Now that Gates is too busy with other things to take tours of the data center, really, Microsoft should do itself a favor and ditch the VMS underpinnings of Windows (some of which they have probably forgotten how to maintain) and build your nice GUI on top of BSD or something similar. That way you won't break your budget (in manpower and electricity) trying to match the Google server farms.
Once that's done you will have the experience needed to do the same on the desktop. You will be doing the world, and yourselves a favor. Thanks in advance!
Oh quit whining (Score:5, Funny)
**OUT OF MEMORY ERROR, SYSTEM HALT**
When will people learn to buy the cable? (Score:4, Funny)
Possible workaround: Use ONE file for everything (Score:3, Funny)
Think about the innovation that is being created here. I can access all the spreadsheets I have ever created whilst updating my current webpage project, search for an e-mail archive and read the latest TPS Report Coversheet without changing files. It means I don't have to partition my hard drive. And I only have *one* file ever to backup.
This has simplified my daily work to the point I fired all my IT staff. Thanks Microsoft!
Who can copy 16,400 files anyway? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
Then you multiply 23 by 30, get 690, take 42, reverse it to 24 and subtruct this from 690. You get 666.
What does that tell you? Ha? Ha?
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
What does that tell you? Ha? Ha?
You've got too much time on your hands?
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessarily his fault, maybe he used Excel to calculate it...
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No more going back to XP? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No more going back to XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably is 16384.
"16400" is clueless technical writerspeak for "The developer said '16,384', and the style guide says to use three significant digits".
(Alternate explanation: "The developer said '0x4000', and the style guide says 'convert to decimal' as well as 'if it's not a round number, use three significant digits'")
There are enclued technical writers, but 16400 is so close to 16384 that it makes me suspect that the author of the MSKB article isn't one of them.
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Just kidding, don't do the math.
(Although I actually just did thinking "Am I on to something?" Darn!)
This isn't a bug! (Score:2)
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Insightful)
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To ensure backward comparabillity. I'm a techno luddite. I got my first DVD drive this year and was slow to get CD drives. All my systems have floppy drives.
98 can be made to puke copying a big file from a floppy. If the floppy is bad you may as well reboot. Delete a few gigs from a hard drive and it goes awy for ages and will more often then not kill the gui task. This is very repeatable. Again, if the CD is bad, reboot.
I can make XP croak as well copying huge files f
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, a lot of the problems I've noticed with XP is related to the stupid fucking way that Windows handles it's file cache. It will literally swap out PROGRAMS YOU ARE ACTIVELY USING to expand the file cache during a large copy/read operation.
Anybody that has ever tried to alt-tab while copying huge files knows about this.... then you sit and wait for the pages to be swapped back into memory. And you might as well get some coffee, cuz with the hard drive already being pegged for the copy operation, it's gonna take awhile. Oh, and once it's finally done and you need to alt-tab back to the original program.... well, hope you need more coffee.
Lately I've been playing with a program called CachemanXP. Google it. It seems to give you more control over the memory and process management functions of Windows. It also lets you do a 'kill -9' equiv, which (as far as I'm aware) even Task Manager won't do, as it insists on trying to do a graceful shutdown first.
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Informative)
Run -> "cmd" -> del %dir\*.*
It will clear most stuff and you will see error messages fly by... redirect output to a file for later examination if desired.
I use the good old 'del' whenever I know I will be deleting something like 20k files and do not wish to waste time waiting for windows to prepare for that operation... why the heck does Windows need to scan directories to be deleted before deleting them is beyond me, just delete them and be done with it. Same thing for copying, Windows wastes time scanning the source directory for no apparent reason since it won't tell you you have insufficient disk space to complete the operation until the target drive runs out of disk space... or any other errors for that matter, until it runs into them while carrying out the actual operation.
Linux has quirks, so does Windows. Linux has the excuse of being an relatively immature desktop OS but on the Windows side, it can only be written off as the result of half-ass design decisions.
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
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No. When removing a file, Windows will always tell you beforehand if you lack disk space for the operation. It is a feature, stop complaining.
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Also, if Windows sees a zero-byte file, it can't handle it. I have to boot Linux and use it to delete the file.
Daily while working with clients I ask myself how anybody could use this garbage on a daily basis. When
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Yup. I've just about given up trying to copy gigabytes of files from large drives to backup drives because of this. I mean, once you've done this ONE TIME, it should be OBVIOUS to ANY designer that it needs to be fixed to allow the copy to continue - or resume - or SOMETHING other than just DYING.
Also, if Windows sees a zero-byte file, it can't handle it. I have to boot Linux and use it to delete the file.
The strange thing is, both of these are idiosyncracies of the explorer.exe shell. Both of these things work fine from the command line from within windows, and if you want lots of move/copy options, you use xcopy.
Which is sad, because clearly its not required for the OS to have these problems, but they exhibit these problems in the GUI shell, where the vast vast majority of people will encounter them.
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SYMPTOMS
If a computer that is running any of the versions of Windows that are listed above contains more than 512 megabytes (for example, 768 megabytes) of physical memory (RAM), you may experience one or more of the following symptoms:
You may be unable to open an MS-DOS session (or command prompt) while Windows is running.
The computer may stop responding (hang) while Windows is starting, or halt and display the following error message:
H
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Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a break.
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If there are 16k files in a simple directory, type rm *.
If it works, try the same with 32k files.
Then 64k files. Eventually it will fail
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Of course there were always ways around it.
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Not really that simple in Vista... (Score:5, Funny)
1. The file is opened.
2. The file is scanned for viruses.
3. The file is scanned for adware.
4. The file is scanned for DRM violations.
5. The user is asked if they're really sure they want to copy the file.
6. The user is asked again if they're sure they want to copy it.
7. The OS makes a judgement on how long it will take to copy so it can update the pretty stats in the gui.
8. Lots of flashy graphics and widgets are loaded to show you a pretty animation while you wait.
9. The file is copied.
10. The destination file is verified that it is intact.
11. The destination file is scanned for viruses.
12. The destination file is scanned for adware.
13. The destination file is scanned for DRM violations.
14. The file is successfully copied.
Hell - I'm surprised their OS can even handle copying 1,600 files, let alone 16,000.
Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:5, Funny)
I got news for you, that is Vista, but it isn't your throat it being forced into.
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Re:Maybe this stems from... (Score:4, Interesting)
That sort of depends if you are talking average home user or average work user. The average home user may actually have this kind of problem - since downloads to the tmp directory are then copied to the correct folder once downloads are complete. Update EQII, WOW & FFXI & you've gone a long ways towards 16K files. Add in patch Tuesday, and your average user is probably going to hit real close to 16K files if they try to keep the PC up for a month.
I probably come reasonably close to 16K files copied in a week on my work PC, so a crash like that would hit me every other week or so - not something I would consider 'Enterprise Ready'.
MS has a habit of programming for the home environment & pushing it into the Business environment.
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Don't. It's going to be wrong, anyway.
How do you handle infinitely recursing soft links?
Does Windows even support soft links?
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From the KB article describing the problem, ie TRFA (where R = Real):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942435/en-us [microsoft.com]
This problem occurs because of a memory leak in the Windows OLE component. This memory leak is triggered by the way that Windows Explorer deals with the extended attributes of the files.
This is 100% in the shell and UI layers, not in the kernel.
Re:Actual info... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actual info... (Score:5, Informative)
Very few files have data streams, so the vast majority of users won't ever see a problem. Kaspersky choses to pollute every single file with a stream, however, which is why systems with it installed exhibit the problem.
Re:Actual info... (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's Kaspersky's fault that alternate data streams are apparently no longer supported by Vista, despite being a basic part of NTFS?
Re:Actual info... (Score:5, Informative)
This is just Yet Another Windows 95 shell bug (yes Vista uses the same shell architecture ported through each version from Win95). It is not the end of support for EAs or ADSes. If anything, it's a belated attempt at better support, done poorly. The shell has always been, IMO, one of the lower quality windows components, especially when it comes to properly interfacing with lower layers. This bug does not surprise me. I've been using robocopy for nontrivial file transfer for a while now.
Re:Actual info... (Score:5, Funny)
Well that's what you get for crossing the streams. Egon warned us. Kaspersky's risking total protonic reversal. I guess they were fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing.
"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup." (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's the typical Windows world attitude.
The operating system is specified to do certain things. It doesn't do them. Well, if not many people use this feature, so what? One of the way we make the feature list long is by including lots of features that don't work, but we figure nobody will use them and nobody will find out...
"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup."
"What kind of soup?"
"The orange scented celery puree. [thesoupspoon.com]
"Oh, hardly anyone orders that. You should expect flies in it. It's your own fault for being foolish enough to order it."
Re:"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup." (Score:4, Insightful)
First you implement and fix basic OS functions, like file copy, etc, so that it works correctly.
Then you implement and fix fancy stuff that most people want and use so that it works correctly.
Then you implement and fix fancy a few people want and use so that it works correctly.
Then you go about implementing and and fixing stuff that almost no one use.
Implementing all at once in a way that doesn't work, then fixing fancy stuff most people use, then fixing basic OS functions, then fixing what a few people use, is the wrong way to go about it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Actual info... (Score:4, Informative)
OLE mem leak; only affects 'extended attrib' files (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just wondering... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:We *ALL* need to give Microsoft a dope slap (Score:5, Informative)
Likely, they're allocating memory to store file attributes or some such that are not being free'd when done with. Hence running out of memory. If you had coded a day in your life you'd see that.
Tom