Low Virtual Memory during XP Installation

[crabig]

Hi everyone,

I did a search, but didn't find this anywhere. I just did a re-install of XP SP3 on a client's machine, and right where it switches from the blue screen mode to the graphical mode, got the error message:

"Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. During this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied. For more information, see Help."

I've seen this dozens of times in running machines, where the page file is set lower than the physical RAM, but I've never come across it during an installation.

At first, I thought it might have been the fact that during testing, I pulled the clients memory out and stuck in a stick of 256MB (It came in with 2GB), so I re-installed the original memory and ran the install again. Same thing.

Any ideas?


TIA

Chris

 

[repairit]

Any idea how full the drive is? I ran into this before and am racking my brain to remember what it was. It may have had something to do with the drive, but I could be thinking of a different incident.

 

[crabig]

Brand new 250GB SATA drive. The old drive crapped out, and that's why I have the machine to begin with.

This is driving me nuts!! I have a loaner at the client's office, but I'd really like to get this back to him on Monday.

 

[repairit]

Random thought. Has the BIOS been changed from default? Anything overclock or any voltages been changed? If so, return to default and try that way.

 

[crabig]

Nope. This is a strictly business machine being used by a novice user. Nothing fancy done to it.

 

[crabig]

For the record, here's the specs:

Intel D945GTP MB
P4 2.7Ghz CPU
1 GB Ram
New 250GB SATA HDD (Seagate)
Using all the onboard peripherals (video, audio, etc)
Has run fine for almost 4 years. HDD crashed and burned on Monday.
Replaced the HDD and got the above error while trying to reload Windows.

 

[rusty.nells]

If this is happening during the install, assuming the memory is good, I suspect the hard drive.

 

[studiot]

Have a good look at the BIOS settings available for SATA.

What is the source for XP SP3?
How are you installing?

 

[NYJimbo]

New 250GB SATA HDD (Seagate)
.

I think this is your problem. Check the BIOS and if needs to be flashed. That BIOS has seen more revisions done than Michael Jacksons face.

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17290/eng/NT_4119_ReleaseNotes.pdf

My gut feeling is that the O/S isnt handling the drive properly and even though its seen in the BIOS it needs whatever fixes they came out with later.
If you cannot do the BIOS, try to do an install with a drive smaller than 160gb, preferrably 120gb and see if you get past that point.

You might even need to load the SATA drivers at install time (f2 or f6 I think at start of install), but try the other stuff first.

 

[crabig]

BIOS was one update behind current. Flashed it, got the same issue. Ran another series of tests on the MB, and it came up with a failure on DMA Channel 0. Stayed up until 2am last night loading up a new machine for my customer so he could have it first thing this morning.

Kept his old unit, so I guess I'll find another MB and put it into the flea market stack of stuff.


Thanks for all the help, everyone.