Out of Memory at Line 56

[mcdhu]

My big lad (age 15), when doing what lads do on the internet ie watching U-tube and MSN-ing at the same time, manages to generate a message which says 'Out of memory at line 56 (sometimes Line 58)'. The PC then freezes for a couple of minutes before resuming normal service.

This is a 4 year old Dell Dimension PC with a Pentium 4, 3.06Hz processor, 80G hard drive and I have just had the RAM upgunned from 500Mb to 2.5G. The sound card is a Nvidia GeForce 4200 and a very recent reinstall of Win xp. All that should have given it a new lease of life. I use AOL Bb and have not had any trouble with that and use IE7. It can't be out of memory!!

I have all the updates as recommended by Secunia, defragged (not that it needed it after the reinstall) and scanned.

Looking at google, it seems to be a IE problem, but the MS website can't help.

Has anyone else had the same or similar problem. I'm fed up being shouted at by an impatient teenager - yes, I know the ultimate answer, but he's not that bad really!!

Cheers all,
mcdhu

[frostbite]

Simple, quick and free answer is to try Opera or Firefox and see if the problem stays.

If not, put IE in the bin where it belongs. (Not literally, just don't use it any more)

[green granite]

Uninstall adobe flash player using the adobe uninstaller ( How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157&sliceId=1) ) then either re-install it or use a lookalike

[The Flying Pram]

I'm no expert but a quick Google threw up a couple of possibilities: Problems with older versions of Adobe Flash player and Java code on certain websites. The Flash player would be dealing with You Tube videos, so it would be worth updating it from the Adobe site.

[Shunter]

It can't be out of memory!!Oh yes it can. This sounds like good old crap coding. It depends what language they're written in, but let's take this as an example:

How it should work:
Application needs memory for something, asks OS for memory.
OS gives application memory.
Application uses memory.
Application gives memory back to OS when it's finished.

How it shouldn't work:
Application needs memory for something, asks OS for memory.
OS gives application memory.
Application uses memory.
Due to sloppy coding, application does not give memory back to OS.
Application needs memory for something, asks OS for memory.
Application uses memory.
Due to sloppy coding, application does not give memory back to OS.
Application needs memory for something, asks OS for memory.
Application uses memory.
Due to sloppy coding, application does not give memory back to OS.
Memory disappears into a black hole somewhere. The OS thinks the application has it, and the application doesn't realise it hasn't given it back to the OS. This is known as a memory leak.

When the error occurs, you could try opening task manager. On the process tab you'll be able to see how much memory the OS has dished out to specific applications. If that doesn't narrow it down, try Sysinternals Process Monitor; it should go pretty mental when such an error arises and point you in the direction of the problem. A start, at least.

[mcdhu]

Thank you very much everyone for the input so far. I'll have a stab at the flash player tomorrow when U-tube is in less demand. Trouble is I can't re-create it - or don't want to!

Wikipedia has quite a good explanation of memory leak - but not as good as yours Shunter!

Cheers all,
mcdhu

[Gertrude the Wombat]

There's another simple explanation for spurious "out of memory" errors.

Sloppy amateur coders make system and library calls and don't check for errors at all. When something goes wrong their code crashes.

Professional programmers check for errors all the time and do their best to give meaningful diagnostics.

Sloppy amateur coders who are vaguely aware of the concept of error checking but too lazy to do it properly will check for errors, and if they detect any error at all, regardless of whether it's running out of memory or something else completely different, will print an "out of memory" message because, well, perhaps it is actually out of memory, and anyway it's very boring to write all the proper code to work out what really happened.

Such things really happen. I've seen the code. On a really bad day because I'm being paid to rewrite it properly.

[mcdhu]

Green Granite, do you have any suggestions as to an alternative to the Adobe Flash Player?

Cheers
mcdhu

[dazdaz]

Might be an idea to increase the the disk/memory for your 'Temporary Internet Files'. Had this problem a few years ago. Start>right click explorer>left click 'internet properties'>left click 'settings' then increase the amount of disk space for Temp internet files>when increased, left click 'ok' at bottom of page> (then reboot). I have mine set at 9863MB.

Your pc uses the HD as memory for temporary internet files. Think it's called SDRam.

[mcdhu]

Got rid of Adobe Flash Player 9 using the removal tool and put in Version 10 which seems to have fixed it - so far so good!!

Many thanks to all concerned for your time.

Cheers
mcdhu

[green granite]

Green Granite, do you have any suggestions as to an alternative to the Adobe Flash Player?

Sorry I was having a mental aberration there, I was thinking of real player for which there are substitutes, there is one for flash but it's open source linux type product. :ugh:

[mcdhu]

No problem - thanks. All fixed now so I guess we can close the thread.

Until the next time,
Cheers,
mcdhu