Windows insufficient resources issue

I'm looking for any suggestions on fixing a problem that has become progressively worse with each use of Parallels/Windows 7 and XP. I'm running into a problem of the system locking up and getting an "insufficient system resources to complete the task" message. The problem became untenable in XP and has not shown up in my Win 7 installation. I'm running Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac, build 8.0.18608 (revision 898384; July 17, 2013), and I have all of the current updates for my Windows 7 Pro. I get this when I run my Dragon Dictation software and CITRIX. I've deleted and reinstalled Parallels and both Windows products in the past, but the problem has arisen once again. It's very frustrating to be in the middle of complex report, only to have the whole thing freeze up for 5-10 minutes and in some cases, completely crash with loss of the report. Any suggestions from seasoned windows and/or parallels users?

 

Hummm ... Citrix generally worked well for me in both XP and Win 7 VMs. Never used Dragon dictation. Did you try to narrow down the problem by watching the Windows-build-in monitoring tools? As you might know, at least Win 7 has a detailed resource monitor you can access via the Task Manager. I'm German and don't know how the tab is named in the English versions - might be 'performance'. It's between the services and network tabs. The resource monitor button opens a new window with detailed information what's going on. Maybe you can see what causes the trouble when it appears. Look for services eating lots of RAM and CPU time.

I'd also take a look at the Windows event log (Control Panel/Administrative tools).

Other (more trivial) things: How much RAM and how many vCores are assigned to the VM, and how much RAM and how many vCores are left for the host?

 

Computer: Apple iMAC, one generation back from newest, i7 intel processor, 8 core, 16 Gb RAM, 27"

Windows 7 install: 64 bit using 2 cores and 4 Gb RAM
Windows XP install: 32 bit using 2 cores and 2 Gb RAM

Citrix is essentially working fine (that's another issue). I'm not certain whether the current problem lies with Parallels, Windows installation or Dragon. The issue with Windows insufficient resources appears after many months of normal use and gets progressively worse. The last time this happened, I needed to completely uninstall windows (both XP and 7), uninstall Parallels, Completely delete all traces of each and then do a complete clean install of each along with the Windows programs that I require. I only use Windows to dictate reports into our LIS via Citrix (we use Cerner for the LIS). The only applications running at the time of these problems are Dragon Medical and Citrix (and of course the background antivirus of which I use AVAST). All temprary files are regularly cleaned out (daily) and the HDD is regularly defragmented. Both Windows installations are up to date. I ran the windows tools available and no problems are detected. A performance check (by windows) shows great performance, and in general it is great. There are a multitude of files open in resource manager, most of which are bacground OS or security files.

Viele danke fur seine antwort. (I hope that I wrote that correctly)

 

The question is, what is the resource that is insufficient, can be RAM, CPU, diskspace, considering the specs I'm inclined to think it's disk space and that there's something filling up the disk. Another option would be a memory leak in the application, but that would be solved in a Windows restart.

 

My Windows 7 partition is 127 Gb with 91.8 Gb free at this time. I can't access the XP at this moment. I thought about the memory leak issue, but that should be relatively constant or consistent whereas I've noticed that the system freezes more frequently with progressive use of the system. Thnaks for your input.

 

So, this only occurs when working in Windows 7 from what you telling me. Memory leaks don't have to be consistent (o rather not consistent in the way you are thinking they are), and indeed fit the pattern of frequently freezing more with progressive system use. You can look at the Task Manager in Windows to see how the resources are being consumed.

Whatever is the case, you don't need to reinstall Windows again, restarting Windows will clear the error.

 

If I had a choice, I'd never use MS Windows again in my life. The windows problems are the reason I changed to a MAC platform which is stable and outperforms Windows/PC in every way.

I've examined the resource monitoryh and don't see anything obvious. The only applications that I have installed in both my Win 7 and Win XP partitions are Citrix, Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical (v10) and AVAST (antivirus/internet security). I don't use windows for anything else due to the progressive memory issues which also occurred on my PC when I had it. Unfortunately the Dragon product only works with Windows, and while there's a MAC version of the product, the MAC version is abysmal to work with, so I'm stuck with using windows.

Restarting the windows partition only clears the problem for a very very short while and then it returns, progressively worse with each use.

 

When the problem occurs can you look int Task Manager and see how is the memory consumption going? What is the app consuming more memory?

This error message is most likely memory related.

 

This article might not seem directly related, but the issue is very similar: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304101

You might try using the fixes they provide, it's related with memory management, how Windows handles it, this is different from a memory leak thou, if this is the cause than some program is opening up too many files and handlers.

 

Thanks for the article. I suspect the issue is with Dragon as the install is huge (3.5 Gb), and the user files get progressively larger with adaptation to voice profile nuances.

 

You have 16 GB RAM, you might try increasing the VM's RAM to 5 or 6 GB.

 

What about the Windows swap file? Windows is a little bit odd concerning the swap file size even with enough RAM allocated. This applies particularly for XP.

By the way: 'Vielen Dank für Deine Antwort'))

 

What about it? When the system has to use the page file will always make the system act slow and freeze.