Vegas Pro 8.0 won’t open – “Low System Memory…”

[Joe Mantaratz]

Your system in more than adequate to run Vegas. Make sure you have the defaults set for Vegas. You can hold down cntrl shift on launch to do that. Then make sure your page file size is being managed by windows. Open up your Task Manager go to Performance and check your Physical memory stats as well as the Kernel memory stats. You should have more than 1 gig available for the physical memory. If these number look ok then I would look to see what processes are running resident. After that do a memory test using any number of available downloads to make sure your memory is not at fault. Do a clean boot with no services running and see if that helps.

Here’s how it works.

Virtual memory is used by Windows to simulate working memory and act as a staging area for the physical memory (commonly referred to as RAM – Random Access Memory).

Whenever you load more programs than will fit in RAM, it uses empty space on the hard drive to simulate additional memory.

Items that are not needed for the current task are sent “backstage” to the virtual memory until needed.

The less RAM you have, the more your system must use the slower virtual memory to juggle all of the applications that you invoke. This is why adding RAM is the “best-bang-for-the-buck” upgrade for increasing the performance of most systems.

When you get a “system low on virtual memory” you are exhausting both the RAM and virtual memory that has been allocated by the operating system.

Under normal circumstances this would only occur if you had actually opened too many programs, but in reality the most common causes for getting this message have less to do with the number of programs the user is opening and more to do with issues that have impacted the operating system.

One possibility that is easy to check is the available free hard drive space used for virtual memory. Open “My Computer” and locate the primary hard drive (usually C:) and right-click on it then choose “Properties.”

A pie chart representing your hard drive will appear with the blue section representing the used space and the purple representing the free space. If the purple is a sliver, it’s time to get the “urge to purge!”

Uninstall any unneeded programs and run the Disk Cleanup utility (Programs/Accessories/System Tools) then check the pie chart again. If you still have very little free space, it may be time to get a bigger hard drive.

If you have plenty of drive space, it may be severely fragmented which reduces the amount of “contiguous” space available for virtual memory. A disk utility included in Windows called Disk Defragmenter or Defrag located in the Programs/Accessories/System Tools folder may help.

Hidden programs that are running in the background (adware, spyware, viruses, worms, and Trojans) is a very common occurrence for Internet connected computers and could be loading down the operating system before you even begin.

Windows XP users can open the Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) to see how many “Processes” are running in the background. With all other programs closed, click on the Performance tab in the Task Manager to see a graph that shows CPU Usage History and Page File Usage History.

If the CPU Usage History graph is spiking up and down and no programs are open, you likely have some pests running around in your system.

[Erick Billyard]

Thanks for the reply. I restored Vegas to defaults (even though I have never successfully opened it) and that did not solve the problem. My CPU usage is next to nothing, no unusual spiking going on.

Now on to memory…I thought Vista allocated as much RAM as it possibily could, unlike other OS’s? I’m not too knowledgeable on the subject, but, this article might explain it.

https://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

I have very little “free” memory available in the Physical Memory, nowhere near 1 gig. But, the way I understand it…this is how Vista operates. I don’t know how I would ever get Vegas to run in that case, but, Premiere Pro and AE are running no problem.

On a clean reboot with no programs running, I have gone into the Performance section of the Taskbar and just watched Vista suck the free Memory right down to a few dozen mb’s. Initially I have plenty of free RAM but it gets sucked away without starting any programs. At first I thought this was a virus or something, but I have none that is being found, cleaned up the registry, checked for spyware, etc…all good on those fronts.

I guess I will try to find a free memory test and see if that’s the problem. I don’t get why I can use Premiere CS3 and AE CS3 with no problems but Vegas won’t even load…

[John Rofrano]

> I have gone into the Performance section of the Taskbar and just watched Vista suck the free Memory right down to a few dozen mb’s.

I don’t know why you are getting memory low errors but I can help you with the problem of your memory getting all used up. Go into the services and disable the utterly useless “Superfetch” service. This is the culprit. It loads totally useless files into memory using all of your memory up hoping that you will need one of them. In reality all it does is help to wear out your hard drives faster. It was a good idea that was implemented poorly. I recommend turning it off and keeping it off.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

Great idea I was not aware of this one, goes along the same lines as their Malicious software remover tool and Defender. Those two present will eat make your system crawl. Your memory should never be low like that but it is interesting to note that you can run AE without a problem. Let us know if this. works.
Joe

[Erick Billyard]

Thanks for the tip John. I tried it, unfortunately it did not work. 🙁

I disabled the Superfetch feature, I know have 2 gigs of free ram in the Physical Memory but am still getting the low memory error when I try to launch Vegas. Restarted and tried again to no avail.

[John Rofrano]

It may be time to call Sony tech support. I can’t imagine what is wrong with Vegas but if you have 2GB of free memory and your Adobe apps work, it sure sounds like a Vegas problem.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Stephen Mann]

No, it sounds like a Vista problem. If it were a Vegas problem then more than one person would be experiencing it.

I only have one computer running Vista and will be shortly upgrading it to XP. So, any suggestions I make will be from my XP experience.

Is Vegas the first application that you run when you boot?

If you are running Norton Utilities, then delete it. Completely. Norton run a lot of background processes that suck the life out of your PC. Turn off the indexing service. It doesn’t suck much memory but it does suck performance.

In Vista, turn off all of the fancy eye candy services. They are memory and performance hogs

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Erick Billyard]

Stephen,

I do not have any Norton related programs on my computer. I use AVG for anti-virus. I have tried starting Vegas first after a reboot. I have tried after being on for a while…doesn’t matter at what stage I try, I get the same error.

I turned off SuperFetch earlier today and that gave me plenty of free RAM but still…error. Cranked up the Virtual Memory setting, still no go. I have unistalled and reinstalled Vegas a couple of times as well (deleting the registry keys after uninstalling). I’ll look into disabling some more services and see if I have any luck.

Thanks.

[Allen Zagel]

Hi
I see your’e using Vista? I don’t know anything about Vista except or the fact I personally won’t use it.

However with XP at least, I’ve read where it may be a good idea to put the paging file (swap file) on another drive other than your C drive. If you have more than 1 internal drive you might want to try putting the swap file on a second drive. That help me quite a bit.

Also I use AVG but am using their Internet security suite. I have a 3 pack license. AVG is one of the few if not the only antivirus that doesn’t affect Vegas aat all. I never have to disable it even when installing new software.

Allen

ASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams

[Carlos Villagran]

he isn’t the only one with this problem, some people might think im a little young to be using these programs, but i do it for fun, im 14, and i make videos on youtube, and sony vegas appears to be the best way aground, im still getting used to AAE but i hate this problem, i had it when i used vegas pro 8 got sick of it and upgraded to vegas pro 9, and just a couple of week now into its, same effing problem, but it only happens to me when i try to render its, and i make sure i always have enough space, i have well over half of the physical memory unused, even when the program is open, I’ve tried everything, even tried transferring files from pro 9 to pro 8, nothing, even tried opening the project on moviemaker, nothing, im going real crazy, because what i need to render is a huge project for me and it just needs rendering, my only choice left is to install vegas to another computer and render there with my external HDD. I’ve heard of a lot of other people too that have this problem no solution yet.