Windows 7 App Errors

[seekermeister]

I've been having consistent errors (See Below) when using a movie cataloguer that I have. I have contacted their support a couple of times about this, but they insist that the problem is at my end, and not the fault of the program.

Working on that premise at the moment, it appears to me that the errors relate to some kind of a memory problem, but I have tested the memory and have found no problems. Therefore I'm wondering about some other kind of memory, like one of the caches on my CPU (AMD Phenom II x6 1090T), because I can't think of any other memory that could be involved. Do these errors suggest anything to anyone?

EDIT: These screenshot were taken after occuring when only scrolling through the thumbnail display.

 

[patcooke]

Goto control panel, system, advanced system settings, advanced, performance settings, advanced, virtual memory. You can set it to automatically assign virtual memory or set it manually - the default is to have virtual memory equal to at least 1.5 time the size of your RAM. If you have a low level of Ram you may need to consider adding RAM or increasing the virtual memory beyond the default ratio - to say 2 times the actual RAM size.

 

[seekermeister]

Actually, I already have 4GBs of RAM and 8GBs of virtual memory. I think that should be adequate for most things I do...at least in terms of this program, because I've been monitoring the RAM usage, and it doesn't get near maximum.

 

[patcooke]

I agree - 4 + 8 should be plenty for most things. You don't say which method you used for a memory test - have you seen memtest which is an in-depth standalone testing system:

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

[seekermeister]

Yes, I've used both the Windows Memory Diagnostic and Memtest86+.

 

[patcooke]

What is the name and version of the app?

 

[seekermeister]

Movie Collector v 9.1 B3.

 

[patcooke]

I see the most recent version is 9.1.4 - have you looked at updating to that?

 

[seekermeister]

They slipped one by me. I shall update, but considering the fact that the previous versions were suppose to help with some performance factors, and I never saw any improvement, I won't expect much.

 

[patcooke]

Know what you mean - but it eliminates another possible culprit.

 

[seekermeister]

Got it updated now, but so far it looks the same. Not sure yet if it will pop errors like before, but I bet it will.

 

[patcooke]

Oh ye of little faith (understandably! )

 

[seekermeister]

I have a lot of faith, just not in computers. I was beginning to think that the update solved part of the problem, regarding the errors popped, but they just came out of hiding again. I checked Core Temp's RAM usage and it was at 62%. With that large of a margin left, it would seem to me that the bottleneck is in memory of some kind that we haven't discussed.

 

[seekermeister]

A thought just crossed my mind. Since the problem seem to be video related, since it occurs when scrolling through the thumbnail display, it seems logical to me that the memory involved must have to do with the video card's memory, rather than RAM. Since I couldn't remember, I checked the specs on the card:

EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1363-KR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - Newegg.com

I would have thought that 1GB of video memory would be sufficient, but then the number of thumbnails in my catalog is ~2550, I would imagine that would require of lot of memory to contain it, as when scrolling through all of them at once.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, it seems as though there is a way to make the video card share it's load with the RAM...isn't there?

 

[patcooke]

Good thinking - I'd have a look in the BIOS settings (probably advanced) to see if the motherboard supports Video card sharing RAM.

 

[seekermeister]

I just took a look, and I don't think that it does support sharing, but then I'm not much good in the BIOS, especially since my owner's manual for the motherboard doesn't have any information about the BIOS in it, other than how to flash it.

The only thing I found that looked as though it related to the video card was the Chipset section of Advanced Settings, where it listed setting for PCIe2 and PCIE4 link ASPM. Don't know what that is for, unless it has to do with setting up Crossfire or SLI. It lists Disabled (current setting), L0s, L1, L0s & L1, L0s downstream, L0s downstream & L1 as alternative settings. I also found where apparently it lets one choose whether to use a PCIe or PCI video card, but none of this looks as though it would be any help.

If sharing can't be setup, then adding more RAM wouldn't do any good, it would just give more space for the system to function, but the video memory would remain a problem. Surely there must be some solution for this that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

 

[patcooke]

Before going too far down the road of RAM sharing might be worth checking out the software spec for hardware requirements.

 

[seekermeister]

I've never seen any hardware specifications for Movie Collector. I just did a search in their FAQ database for "hardware specification", and it found nothing.

Not sure that their tech was being totally straight with me, but he claimed that they had only had a couple of people having a problem like mine, and I don't think that my system is all that antiquated, and if almost everyone can use the program without any glitches, I should be able to also.

 

[seekermeister]

Oops! I changed the search to System Requirements and found something, but not much. All that it said was:

Windows:
Requirements:
Vista, 7 or XP
512mb RAM (1GB+ recommended)

But then the average user probably doesn't have as large of a database to deal with as I do. I vaguely remember an answer given for a question regarding how many videos could be entered into the program, and the answer was thousands...without any problems.

 

[patcooke]

Well that's pretty minimal isn't it but if they cannot give you actual limits on the system it may well be that you have simply blown one. The response you've had from the authors doesn't sound impressive - do you have so much data stored that you are pretty well committed to the product? There are many interesting looking packages out there offering similar features with good customer feedback.