"Cumulus" (or Avast!) using all my memory?

[AllyCat]

Hi,

I doubt if this is fundamentally a "Cumulus" issue but it's only Cumulus which appears to suffer the problem. Other software such as normally memory-hungry Paintshop Pro seems to work OK. No other apps are running when the problem occurs.

When I attempted to download a few weeks of data from my "Yeovil" station, Cumulus appeared to download the data satisfactorily from the FO 3080 station (in this case I don't think FO are to blame!) but the Netbook almost totally "hung" just as Cumulus started to enter the "normal display" mode. Several re-attempts (and also from a different FO 1080) produced the same effect and it appears that the netbook has totally "run out of memory". So it won't even run the Task Manager or grab a screenshot (attached picture from my "real" camera). Only "Start > Turn Off" is possible (even that with a corrupted display) and Cumulus doesn't appear to have updated the files.

The only "change" that has been made to the netbook in the last few weeks is an "upgrade" of the Avast! antivirus software (not just the definitions file). So my next recourse was to "restore" to the previous version, but all the System Restore files have vanished! Now that does seem suspiciously like a virus (it happened to me once before on another PC), but I have just run "Malwarebytes" without anything found. Attached is the diags log from a "clean install" of v1.9.3 (attempting to download about two days of data).

I suspect that it's time for a complete Windows re-install on this PC, but has anybody any other ideas first?

Thanks, Alan.

[steve]

You've 'rewound' the start time, and it does use more memory at start up, to hold all the logger entries etc, but even so, it only had to download 236 entries, so the amount of memory needed wouldn't be huge. It's quite possible that there is a memory leak and that this particular situation with a new install could expose that - lots of new records being broken etc. But it's still hard to see how it could use up all of the system's memory. Perhaps it's a particular type of memory that it's running out of; I don't know enough about Windows architecture to say.

It started getting into trouble here:

3/7/12 11:20:23.046 : Error writing today.ini: Unable to write to C:\Cumulus\Cumulus193\data\today.ini
3/7/12 11:20:23.062 : Error writing today.ini: Unable to write to C:\Cumulus\Cumulus193\data\today.ini
3/7/12 11:20:23.062 : 3/7/12 11:20:23 AM Error closing data file: C:\Cumulus\Cumulus193\data\Jul12log.txt. I/O error 1450
3/7/12 11:20:23.062 : Error writing today.ini: Unable to write to C:\Cumulus\Cumulus193\data\today.ini

You could try repeating but with task manager running first.

[mcrossley]

To me it looks like a Windows resource exhaustion problem rather than allocation of memory - file handles, semaphores etc.

Try excluding the Cumulus folders from Avast! if you haven't already done so.

[steve]

I've just tried a fresh install with my Fine Offset, and rewinding a couple of days. It downloaded and processed 578 logger entries without a problem, and the memory usage according to Task Manager didn't go above 20MB.

Try excluding the Cumulus folders from Avast! if you haven't already done so.

Yes, excluding the Cumulus folders from AV is always a good idea.

[steve]

Something else you could try would be to turn off updating the display during logger processing.

[AllyCat]

Hi Steve and Mark,

Thanks for your replies. It's managed longer periods of updates fine in the past (and this period downloaded alright on my Partner's similar netbook) so it definitely seems to be something that's "happened" to my Netbook recently. I'd (temporarily) turn off the AV if I could see how to do it! It's in danger of being uninstalled.

Cheers, Alan.

[AllyCat]

Hi,

An update: I may be jumping to (erroneous) conclusions but it appears to be a "bug" in Avast! (or it's failed to detect some malware on the Netbook).

When I disabled the file-checking (the option is buried deep under an "advanced" option tab) then 4+ weeks of data downloaded perfectly into Cumulus. But if I enabled Avast! (even with the complete Cumulus folder excluded), then the netbook still hung/crashed as described above. The Cumulus files appear to have been updated for about 3 weeks, but one of the .ini files may have been corrupted because often Cumulus starts on the "station settings" screen when restarted.

I believe I've verified all the above on at least two instances, but am getting rather bored with entering station settings, so will wait to see what transpires. Maybe I'll have to change to AVG, but in the past it has seemed rather resource-hungry for a netbook.

Cheers, Alan.

[steve]

I've used both AVG and Avast in the past, but eventually got fed up with both of them for various reasons. I now use MS Security Essentials and find it excellent.

[Super-T]

I agree with Steve.....MS Essentials is all I use on "smaller" computers as the latest AVG seems to just about stop Windows XP. I run AVG on Windows 7 and it doesn't seem to have the same "Slowdown" effect as on XP.
Same applies to Nortons.......very resource hungry.
Occasionally an update from AVG will introduce problems but they are normally on to it very quickly for a fix.

[mcrossley]

Another vote for Essentials from me too. Use it on all my MS 'puters now, really resource light in use. Don't even think about some of the commercial products - shudder!

[AllyCat]

Hi,

Thanks for your recommendations. Yes, we tried MS Essentials when it was first introduced, but we sometimes use our netbooks on Mobile Broadband which is charged by the MB. There didn't seem to be any option to delay automatic updates until connected to WiFi, or does Essentials just adopt the same settings as Windows Updates?

However, I've just run the netbook again and Avast! has offered another software update. That's just 5 days after the last update, whilst the previous to that was more than 3 months ago. And top of the list of "improvements" is "Memory Leak Fixed".

But yet again it attempted to "sneak in" Google Chrome as the default browser, with both the "Install Chrome" and "Make Chrome my default browser" options pre-ticked on the AV installation page.

Cheers, Alan.

[Charlie]

MS Security Essentials gets my vote hands down too.

You can stop MS Security Essentials from automatically updating by creating a firewall rule to block both C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client\msseces.exe
and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client\Antimalware\MpCmdRun.exe - at least according to a couple user groups. You simply create the rules, then enable the rules when you don't want to pay for the download when travelling, and disable them when you are on wifi back home.

Security Essentials seems to be the fastest and leanest of the free programs (I won't mention the bloated pigs you have to pay for), and I suspect that since Microsoft faces the brunt of criticism around viruses, they are putting a lot of effort into their "free" AV product.