GDI Problem

[Lu Zuckerman]

Help,

For the last several weeks I keep getting a pop-up-window which states the following:

GDI (Graphics Device Interface) resourses are low.

My computer is 1 1/2 years old and I have a Matrox Millennium Video card with I believe a 16 meg memory.

I haver dumped all of the Internet history and I keep getting the warning. I followed the instructions and raised the sensitivity level in the Norton crash guard and I keep getting the warning. I get it no matter how many multi tasking screens are up. I even get it when I open my Email and, when my computer is at rest the window is there when I wake up the computer.

Any suggestions?

PS While typing this post the window came up two times.

[allthatglitters]

When several of our campany computers gets a GDI.EXE msg it appears during a print request, so may it be a print problem? A reboot tends to be a short term remedy. Also from my previous, long ago experiance of Crash Guard, I have stopped using it as it seemed to find endless problems, non exsistant problems.

[stagger]

Well, this has nothing to do with your video card - so you can forget about that.

As for tracking down the cause you should run the System Resource Meter and keep an eye out to see just what applications are causing the problem.

As I understand it Win 9x uses a finite amount of memory (64kb?) to store information about all the graphic components of Windows - fonts, bitmaps etc. The more applications that you have open and the more graphic objects being used - the less GDI resources will remain available.

So as you open applications free GDI resources will drop - and as you close them they should increase. However, sometimes leaks can arise where the resources aren't freed up when an application closes.

If you open and close various applications while keeping an eye on the resource meter you may be able to spot the culprit.

[Mac the Knife]

Lu, you are probably getting this because your PC is opening up too many programs on the quiet when it boots. You probably have a system tray crammed with applets. - many of which don't need to be there.

First of all look in your Startup folder and ditch anything you don't think you'll want (FindFast is a good candidate, a useless memory hog) - create a new folder called StartNot and move things into there so you can get them back again if necessary.

Then fire up Msconfig (the system configuration utility) - look in the config.sys and autoexec.bat files for 16-bit drivers and apps you don't need to get going. Now look under the Startup Tab (this isn't the same as the Startup folder) and uncheck things that you know that you won't need to have running the whole time (you can always come back and re-enable them if you have to).

There are many places that can be used to start applications on Windoze system startup (win.ini is another) and programmers can be sneaky (and nonstandard) with their install programs, so often Windoze starts off with dozens of applications that don't need to be up and running the whole time (think of them as TSRs that usually don't actually need to be resident).

I purged my stem of startup junk and got a much faster boot and no more out of resource problems.

[If you know Regedit look at the My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run key]

[stagger]

Mac is correct that having too many applications running (especially things like Findfast) can impair system performance - but I don't think this has much to do with the specific problem that you're having.

It sounds very much like you have some sort of leak as I suggested - an application that is using GDI resources and not freeing them up afterwards which drives you down to 0% and leads to crash.

Think of the GDI resource heap as a big table containing information about all graphical objects in use. This table is 64K in size - no matter how much RAM you have. And you won't really notice a difference in performance if you have 90% free or 30% free. It's only when you get some sort of leak like this that the resources get eaten up completely and you end up with a crash.

By stopping a whole load of programs from starting up you may see improved performance AND you may also happen to get rid of the leaky app. But do it one at a time and you might be able to identify the culprit.

Have a look to see if you’re running any old 16-bit applications – old Windows 3.1 stuff.

[bblank]

I pretty much agree stagger - your first answer was about the same that I gave LZ when he first asked the question:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=34249

However, when it comes to "an application that is using GDI resources and not freeing them up afterwards", there can be only one culprit if this happens: Windows, not the application. During the execution of an application it is the responsibility of the application to free allocated memory when that memory is no longer needed. The OS has no control over this. But the OS is responsible for reclaiming resources that it has allocated to a program once that program terminates.

Most stuff that ends up in the system tray consumes only a small amount of GDI resources. Browsers and programs that load lots of fonts are usually the problems. BTW, I've noticed that Netscape uses far fewer GDI resources with the new PPRuNe pages.