Hi,
I just got the new MDA2 and although it is a really awsome machine I see something very strange: I can open three apps and have them running in the background but as soon as I start the fourth one the first one gets closed automatically. It doesn't matter if it is ms reader or explorer or media player, they simply get closed Anybody else seen this on their WM2003 device ???
Cheers,
Oliver
This is the answer I got from conduits:
" It is indeed a feature of Windows Mobile 2003 -- the operating system will
shut down applications that are in the background when you are low on
memory. In the next release, we will incorporate a "do not close when
playing in background" option, which will fix that problem."
Is really nobody else seeing this behaviour apart from me ? I must be doing something wrong. With 50MB free memory it should not have to close apps down.
To be truthfully I think its a bug in the PPCPE WM2003 OS and has nothing to do with the available free memory at this point. But I'm pretty sure there'll be a fix/update.
HTH
Just read on PPCW.net that the limitation is not memory but an OS limit to 32 processes, for a new one to start once this has been reached an existing one must be closed. Looks like this one could be very difficult to resolve...
Read full article at: http://www.ppcw.net/index.php?itemid=1645
Bigface title to a not sure method, but with hoping success for the object.
I think everybody is fighting with this nerve-racking memory bug in wm5+vga+universal thing.
Me too.
Very very hard.
I'm very angry with this statement.
I bought the newest, most professional PDA with the oldest, most amateur speed.
It is not new for anybody, I'm sure.
I've opened this topic to solve this *******, because I think ROMupgrade is coming very slow.
I tried hundreds of different things to keep my RAM's free memory and get my Jasjar/MDApro/Exec more speed.
I'd like to share my experience to you and I'd like you to share your experience to us, to understand why does it happen.
OK....so.....
1) My first and biggest remark in this theme:
gwes.exe (this is a system process, which is runnig continously with the system to let us using functions of our device)
It is runnig with the following modules: (on my device, it is not sure all on yours too, but I think almost)
lrgwesex.dll
touch.dll
commctrl.dll.0409.mui
commctrl.dll
aygshell.dll
keybddr.dll
ddi.dll
toolhelp.dll
gwes.exe.0409.mui
toolhelp.dll
ceddk.dll
coredll.dll.0409.mui
ossvcs.dll
ole32.dll
coredll.dll
So...this gwes.exe starts with the system after a soft reset taking about 6MB RAM memory.
If you are watching carefully, when your RAM is getting less this gwes.exe is getting bigger.
In one of my examples after a soft reset I had 24MB free memory, and when I had just something like 4MB I checked the running services.
And you know what???
gwes.exe was using by then 19.5MB from the memory!!!!!!!!!!!
So I think when you start an application, system files are using more memory with applications, but when you close the application you have just more with the memory using by this application but less with the memory using by the system with this application.
I'm not sure with this, but i'm sure there is a big problem with this gwes.exe service.
I found more processes (device.exe, filesys.exe, cprog.exe, shell32.exe, repllog.exe) which are doing something the same but not that much than gwes.exe.
So if somebody has some reflections about this write it down to us!
2) A lot of people say there is a hack in the registry / storage manager cache keys which we increase, system will operate with higher speed.
I'm not sure now.
I tried a lot with different keys, and my suggestion is totally the opposite than that: when I set different cache keys (glyphcache, storage cahes...) to zero the system eats less memory and something the same with the speed.
Interesting.
I don't have exact results in these points, but thinking about somewhere here the answers.
Please help us to find the solution together to solve this irritating bug!
Sorry for my english, I'm hungarian.
THX
Tuningszöcske (It is in english something like Tuning-Grasshoper)
Here are my results ...
After Reset
=======
gwes 6.49 MB
filesys 1.86 MB
shell32 1.95 MB
cprog 2.12 MB
device 1.46 MB
services 215 KB
connmgr 91 KB
After Bloating
=========
gwes 12.7 MB
filesys 2.7 MB
shell32 2.39 MB
cprog 2.12 MB
device 2.3 MB
repllog 555 KB
services 407 KB
connmgr 111 KB
GWES really does bloat up a lot over time. Did a search on the net and it appears to be graphics related ...
It's good to see other's same results.
I'm searching for the answers countinously too...
I never have a memory issue with my dopod900, even after a week of usage with various games and application, the memory still remain around 22++M. Will try to check up the result and post it here.
I also want to know why........
After the reset, my machine has around 20M left and after a while, only 11M left and that's last for quite a long time. I have no experience that the memory is only around 4M....
Cheers,
chtan said:
I never have a memory issue with my dopod900, even after a week of usage with various games and application, the memory still remain around 22++M. Will try to check up the result and post it here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using the stock machine without all the tweaks ? I mean have you applied optimizations like cache settings, etc ?
I'm just wondering if it might have something to do with some of the changes we made to improve performance :?
The issue is partially duie to Microsoft, but also partially due to 3rd party developers. I know for a fact that a lot of developers do not bother to have their applications issue defragment or compact instructions to the operating system after closing. They take up place and resources in the memory heap but do not "give them back" after they close.
You can blame the Universal as much as you want, but in my opinion it's one hell of a machine that had the misfortune to be the first officially released WM5 machine out there. Microsoft is indeed working on speed, stability and other issues form their end (the latest O2 Exec rom is by far the fastest and most stable ROM there is), but the developers need to do their bit as well and start working on their program's behaviour.
"If a kid does not tidy up his room, it's likely it will start losing things"
Wiz said:
The issue is partially duie to Microsoft, but also partially due to 3rd party developers. I know for a fact that a lot of developers do not bother to have their applications issue defragment or compact instructions to the operating system after closing. They take up place and resources in the memory heap but do not "give them back" after they close.
You can blame the Universal as much as you want, but in my opinion it's one hell of a machine that had the misfortune to be the first officially released WM5 machine out there. Microsoft is indeed working on speed, stability and other issues form their end (the latest O2 Exec rom is by far the fastest and most stable ROM there is), but the developers need to do their bit as well and start working on their program's behaviour.
"If a kid does not tidy up his room, it's likely it will start losing things"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm, you would think that Microsoft would be smart enough to put in some checks to automatically release the memory used by a an application after it closes :?
I don't blame the universal, the hardware is fine and I'm quite happy with it. I do however blame Microsoft. WM5 is just soooo slow. If I didn't do all the performance tweaks that's been discussed here, I don't think I can live with this device. You have to understand that I come from using 3 generations of Palm devices previously, and even though they are using much slower processors, they are waaay more responsive than WM5.
The last Palm I used was the Sony Clie NX70. I used it for 2 years without having to do ROM upgrades, etc. and it worked just fine. One would think that given the number of years that Microsoft had to improve WM, that they would be able to do a better job. As it is now, I'm finding all kinds of weird bugs all over.
Well, I'm just frustrated, sorry for ranting :lol:
christan said:
The last Palm I used was the Sony Clie NX70. I used it for 2 years without having to do ROM upgrades, etc. and it worked just fine. One would think that given the number of years that Microsoft had to improve WM, that they would be able to do a better job. As it is now, I'm finding all kinds of weird bugs all over.
Well, I'm just frustrated, sorry for ranting :lol:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been making the same point - M$ should know better and memory management is not bleeding egde tech. My Symbian devices have rock solid memory management, they just keep running for weeks and months without the need for a reset. For a US$1000 we should expect better quality all round. Lets hope in te next 6 months we finally get what we paid for.
jah said:
christan said:
The last Palm I used was the Sony Clie NX70. I used it for 2 years without having to do ROM upgrades, etc. and it worked just fine. One would think that given the number of years that Microsoft had to improve WM, that they would be able to do a better job. As it is now, I'm finding all kinds of weird bugs all over.
Well, I'm just frustrated, sorry for ranting :lol:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been making the same point - M$ should know better and memory management is not bleeding egde tech. My Symbian devices have rock solid memory management, they just keep running for weeks and months without the need for a reset. For a US$1000 we should expect better quality all round. Lets hope in te next 6 months we finally get what we paid for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I sure hope someone here can figure out a hack to fix this soon, cause as it is now, I'm having to soft reset at least once a day, quite often more.
Can any users here who are NOT experiencing the memory leak issues come forward ? I think we would all like to know what we're doing differently that might be causing the memory leaks ...
chtan said:
I never have a memory issue with my dopod900, even after a week of usage with various games and application, the memory still remain around 22++M. Will try to check up the result and post it here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi chtan!
Is it possible to ask you to backup your registry to a file and upload here?
Just to see what is different in your system than ours.
And which is your ROM and ExtendedROM version?
THX
Hint
Hi Guys,
The above phenomenon is due to the reason that now we all have data in the flash memory.I was using earlier Nokia Symbian phones, viz 6600,9500...in all these the same used to happen and I had to restart the device...but there are 3rd party softwares, which compress the RAM if the above thing happens and we are at the initital full RAM memory w/o restarting the device...like Stacker, Switcher etc...similarly we also have "Place Maker" for Smart Phones...to do the same...someone can try this app...or someone can make an app to do the same...I hope this gives some light to solve this problem..
Re: Hint
hdubli said:
Hi Guys,
The above phenomenon is due to the reason that now we all have data in the flash memory.I was using earlier Nokia Symbian phones, viz 6600,9500...in all these the same used to happen and I had to restart the device...but there are 3rd party softwares, which compress the RAM if the above thing happens and we are at the initital full RAM memory w/o restarting the device...like Stacker, Switcher etc...similarly we also have "Place Maker" for Smart Phones...to do the same...someone can try this app...or someone can make an app to do the same...I hope this gives some light to solve this problem..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you are right.
This is a secondary option to solve this problem.
But I don't know any application for pocket pc which does RAM-compression.
Do you know one?
Re: Hint
Tuningszocske said:
hdubli said:
Hi Guys,
The above phenomenon is due to the reason that now we all have data in the flash memory.I was using earlier Nokia Symbian phones, viz 6600,9500...in all these the same used to happen and I had to restart the device...but there are 3rd party softwares, which compress the RAM if the above thing happens and we are at the initital full RAM memory w/o restarting the device...like Stacker, Switcher etc...similarly we also have "Place Maker" for Smart Phones...to do the same...someone can try this app...or someone can make an app to do the same...I hope this gives some light to solve this problem..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you are right.
This is a secondary option to solve this problem.
But I don't know any application for pocket pc which does RAM-compression.
Do you know one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By RAM compression, do you mean an active app that runs in the background to automatically compress stuff in RAM then decompress stuff in the RAM on-the-fly when used ?
If it is what I think it is, I don't think RAM compression is the way to go unless there is absolutely no other solution, cause compression-decompression will have a significant performance impact.
I think it's more important to get to the root of the problem
NO.
There are many applications for PC which make the RAM free from unused services, applications, files...
Using this method, you don't need to restart your machine.
It worth it for me to push a button or a shortcut to free the memory without a softreset.
Tuningszocske said:
NO.
There are many applications for PC which make the RAM free from unused services, applications, files...
Using this method, you don't need to restart your machine.
It worth it for me to push a button or a shortcut to free the memory without a softreset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Opps, I misunderstood the use of the term "Compression" there ...
Yes, if someone can come up with an app that can "clean" up the RAM, that would be good too
Wiz said:
The issue is partially duie to Microsoft, but also partially due to 3rd party developers. I know for a fact that a lot of developers do not bother to have their applications issue defragment or compact instructions to the operating system after closing. They take up place and resources in the memory heap but do not "give them back" after they close.
You can blame the Universal as much as you want, but in my opinion it's one hell of a machine that had the misfortune to be the first officially released WM5 machine out there. Microsoft is indeed working on speed, stability and other issues form their end (the latest O2 Exec rom is by far the fastest and most stable ROM there is), but the developers need to do their bit as well and start working on their program's behaviour.
"If a kid does not tidy up his room, it's likely it will start losing things"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No hack or tweak applied, everything in stock condition. This confirmed my suspicious that Exec and I-mate only having this problem and this is due to their highly customized rom set.
That is strange.. I also have Dopod 900 and suffer from the same problem of memory leaks. The first time I got my Dopod 900 with factory default settings and applications, I played with it for 2 days and noticed that the memory went down to 15++ M.
So I would assume that without any 3rd party applications installed, memory leaks problem is there..
Chtan!
Then you could be a magician, because - i think - we all use the ROM with factory settings after a hard reset, and then - same as you -, when we install a lot of different applications and games, we have the memory leak.
So, what about this registry backup for us?
Or can you write it here the apps and games you use?
I have not performed a soft reset for 5 days. I am performing a test on how long my EXEC can last without having to perform a soft reset. I use mine regularly everyday, about an hour on phone calls, 2 hours on browsing using PIE, the usual opening and closing of applications, and I leave it at night charging while playing a DVD on a continuous loop for non-stop movie playback. I do admit the only time I notice slow downs (4 seconds to open an application) is if I leave about 10 open applications at the same time running in the background. That is why I make sure I close all open applications after use using Handy Menu's option to close all. As of now here is my memory allocations:
Storage
Total: 43.72 MB
In use: 14.52 MB
Free: 29.19 MB
Program
Total: 49.93 MB
In use: 30.94 MB
Free : 18.99 MB (with active sync open and running attached to my computer) If I unplugged my EXEC and close active sync, it goes back to 20.19 MB
These are all my open applications and memory usage without any slow downs:
gwes.exe: 7.48 MB
filesys.exe: 2.72 MB
device.exe: 2.43 MB
cprog.exe: 2.33 MB
shell32.exe: 1.43 MB
repllog.exe: 499.69 KB
services.exe: 227.76 KB
tmail.exe: 163.62 KB
connmgr.exe: 131.81 KB
HandyMenu.exe: 123.81 KB
rapiclnt: 115.90 KB
poutlook.exe: 47.90 KB
SDDaemon.exe: 47.90 KB
MemMaid.exe: 23.90 KB
shfind.exe: 19.90 KB
srvtrust.exe: 7.90 KB
NK.EXE: 0 Bytes
Even with these applications open. My EXEC runs fine with no slow downs.
I am happy with my EXEC. Even after 12 hours of continuous Movie playback at night, I don't feel my EXEC over heating. This thing is amazing!
hi, I'd like to know if you can use the sd card and say partition it so that you can make your xda exec device use the storage on it as programe memory so it speeds the device up. this really is a fab device, but it really lacks the memory capacity that I had on a blue angel.
I have a 1gb sd card and don't mind loosing any storage space to accomplish this. if there isn't a way, can someone try and find a reg tweek for this....
anyway, I leave it with you...
cheers.
joey jojo
I think this is something which should be taken as a clue by developers who make programs such as Memaid, Pocket Mechanic, etc and include this as a a feature. Maybe the concept will be something similar to the Virtual Memory on a regular windows pc.
You are absolutely right, I too really miss the shortage of program memory. I can never open a really complicated web page with lots of images in Netfront before I get the dreadful warning that I have run out of program memory.
I hope some developer picks this up and incorporates this as a feature. I am sure this will increase his sales many many times.
Regards
you can put your internet explorer's cache on the sd-card...
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Cache]
change cache from '\windows\profiles\guest\temporari internet files' to '\SD_MMCard' to achieve this...
however you'll notice that it only slows your device incredibly down if your SD-Card is not set up right
see also http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=50301
There is just no way a third party program can add this. On the windows mobile team blog, there's a post from a few months back talking about doing virtual mem on the SD card, and basically, it's just not in the OS and won't be until at least WM6, and third-party programs can't do it.
JasperJanssen said:
There is just no way a third party program can add this. On the windows mobile team blog, there's a post from a few months back talking about doing virtual mem on the SD card, and basically, it's just not in the OS and won't be until at least WM6, and third-party programs can't do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are very disappointing news...
Speaking of memory management and the OS itself..I really wonder during the development of WM5, did they try to come up with a better OS, or just building up upon WM2003.
Reason why I say this is my Universal crashed yesterday, and a look into the "Memory" panel in the Settings showed the OLD memory management screen along with the sliders and all... :lol:
Looks like the developers got lazy and just placed a panel on top of the old one :lol:
Ehh.. You guys want to be buying new SD cards every third month?
Flash memory like the SD cards have only a limited number of write operations before they fail.
Using them for storage is good, because you don't write to the cards that much.
Using them as memory would totally screw up the card in a rather short time.
And, I think using SD card for program memory would result in a slower application, because of the read/write speed of the SD compared to the RAM..
--- EDIT ---
3 months is just a figure of speach..
I have no idea of how much time it would take before failure occurs..
It would probably result in slower and slower performance, because some sectors would be worn out faster than others..
What you say about the writes before failure is right, but when you are faced with a £300 PDA that has the same amount of RAM as my little finger, you have to do something.
SD cards are cheap enough these days, and money grows on trees. I'd rather be able to leave programs open and not worry about how much it will slow the machine down to have more that three big apps running than I would be about coughing up for a new SD card every 3 months.
I have seen a 4GB card on Ebay for less than £80, Tescos sell 1GB for £30 these days.
The great thing about Tescos is their guarantee. You buy the card, write it to death, take it back for a full refund, no questions asked.
is there a registry hack that will close a program instead of minimising it?
Here you go! http://www.trancreative.com/mb.aspx and the best part is that it's free!!!
There are many programs that will do this, some of them have many other functions that you will find useful.
My favourite program, WisBar Advance does this as part of a massive set of functions, and adds the ability to completely skin your device.
The trade is that it uses heaps of valuable RAM and isn't free.
ViJay555 has a piece of software that will also perform this function, VJOKButt.
This is something that many people ask about, we all find our own solution.
cheers guys i'll try them out. does anyone know why microsoft did this?
bobbyb said:
cheers guys i'll try them out. does anyone know why microsoft did this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So that applications will "seem" to start faster after the first initial load.
The way MS sees us using the device often has little to do with the reality of using a PDA.
The default tools loaded by WM5 or the carriers (the ExtROM contents) are what they assume we will use and they do try to provide the things that most people want. Word, Phone, Calendar etc will all run quite happily in the memory that we have been (grieviously under)allocated on the device. However, when you start putting lots of third party apps in there you find that 64MB isn't enough. Skinning, Today plugins, TomTom, alternative BT stacks and voice diallers, better PIMs and the like all take up more space than MS had planned and we have to close them to save space.
If you ran it the way it was intended then minimising without closing would be acceptable.
Reminds me of Monty Python:
You're all individuals!
I'm not ...
One day I'll find a way to upgrade this baby to 512MB of DDR and drop a 2GHz CPU in it ... Then I'll be a happy camper =)
One problem I ran into, well, really not a problem just didnt think. As mentioned there are several programs that work great and I run SPB Pocket plus and all was great until my Exec started running slower & slower and eventually crashed. What I realized was that I was closing programs with the "ok" button on the keypad. This will only minimize not close so my programs were still running and stacking up in memory. This is a big "DUH". As long as you use the "x" in the top coner then the programs mentioned can close your program (as designed) but if you use the keypad "ok" the programs will continue to run in the background. Just a heads up.
Unless you use PQz! This program has an option that lets the "ok" button on the keyboard actually close apps.
have I mentioned I'm a fan of PQz? ;-)
Thanks, I will check it out.
Compared with OS like windows xp, window mobile is limited with max process around 30. when it is reached to this figure, the os will kill one or more to keep this limit.
So does anyone know if it is possible to create a program by using the way like attaching to today (should be shell.exe I think) or using services to keep the number of process low? and is there any limitation by using such ways?
Well actually the number is not 'around 30' it is exactly 32 according to WM documentation.
But you rarely reach this number due to other considerations.
Still there are some things that do not count as a process, namely DLLs.
You can create a today plugin or a service DLL.
The limitation for services would be the size of the virtual memory slot they occupy.
Thanks, the number 30 is based on my experience. I have tried to open 100 processes by mortscript and in the end, only 30 or less was survived on my wm6 device. This figure is even smaller for my wm2003se device, it is just around 20.
I am really waiting for wm7, so I can run as many program as I like without considering any program being killed by the OS.
mic2007 said:
Compared with OS like windows xp, window mobile is limited with max process around 30. when it is reached to this figure, the os will kill one or more to keep this limit.
So does anyone know if it is possible to create a program by using the way like attaching to today (should be shell.exe I think) or using services to keep the number of process low? and is there any limitation by using such ways?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! You should take a look here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=235792
What you need is PerformCallback4 function which is undocumented (excluded from SDK) but still exists there.
Thank you!
mic2007 said:
I am really waiting for wm7, so I can run as many program as I like without considering any program being killed by the OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One thing to keep in mind is this: each process takes up system resources (real memory, virtual memory, GDI, etc)
32 is the max system managing capability and that includes processes run by the system not just the ones you start.
The reason you got the low (and different) numbers is most likely because your device ran out of memory before you reached the quota or there were processes running in background you were not aware of.
While the promise of running more than 32 processes on WM 7 architecture is nice we can only hope it will be accompanied by more than 64MB of RAM or it will be pretty useless...
Yes, low memory is another factor that the OS kill one or more processes to free up resources. Supposedly WM7 is based on CE 6 kernel that should allow storage card to be used as RAM, if that is the case which means the distance between desktop and handheld device will be much closer.
Using SD as RAM is about the last thing you want to do!
I have not heard of this feature but even the fastest cards (assuming the device will have a faster bus to support these speeds) are too slow to act as RAM.
Or perhaps you are referring to using it as swap space like the hard drive on a PC? That can work but speed would still be sacrificed.