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BAD_POOL_CALLER? What the …
29 August 08 06:00 AM

From time to time, a customer support incident for a bugcheck will make its way over to us on the Performance team.  Those of you that have worked with support engineers on the Performance team already know that we generally don’t work with bugcheck Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 0 Comments    

Filed under: debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting

Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini
27 May 08 06:00 AM

We've talked a lot about the /3GB switch and its effect on system resources in previous posts.  Today we are going to discuss how to determine whether or not /3GB is enabled on a 32-bit system without looking at the boot.ini file or using MSCONFIG.EXE.  Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 5 Comments    

Filed under: debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting, two minute drill

Troubleshooting Server Hangs – Part Four
16 May 08 06:00 AM

Welcome to Part Four of our Server Hang troubleshooting series. Today we are going to discuss PTE depletion and Low Physical Memory conditions and how those two issues can lead to server hangs. In our post on the /3GB switch we mentioned that in general, Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 4 Comments    

Filed under: debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Server Hangs – Part Three
09 May 08 06:00 AM

In our last post on Server Hangs, we discussed using the Debugging Tools to examine a dump file to analyze pool depletion.  Today we are going to look at using our troubleshooting tools to examine a server hang caused by a handle leak.  Issues Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 2 Comments    

Filed under: debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Server Hangs – Part Two
06 May 08 06:00 AM

Several months ago, we wrote a post on Troubleshooting Server Hangs .  At the end of that post, we provided some basic steps to follow with respect to server hangs.  The last step in the list was following the steps in KB Article 244139 to prepare Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 2 Comments    

Filed under: debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting

Using Special Pool to find out who is allocating a Pool Tag
15 April 08 06:00 AM

OK, a quick disclaimer right at the start.  The steps we discuss in this post assume that you are very comfortable with kernel debugging, and in particular live debugging.  This is a bit of a niche post, but it is a question that we get every Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 1 Comments    

Filed under: architecture, debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting

What is IRQL and why is it important?
22 January 08 06:00 AM

When people first hear the term IRQL (pronounced Er-kel) their thoughts sometimes turn to the sitcom "Family Matters" and Jaleel White's alter ego, Steve Urkel.  However, we're not going to be taking a trip down Television's Memory Lane Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 2 Comments    

Filed under: architecture, debugging, memory management, performance

Understanding Crash Dump Files
08 January 08 06:00 AM

At the end of 2007 we talked about Bugchecks and why they happen .  Today we're going to talk about the Crash Dump files themselves - the different types of dumps, how the dumps themselves are generated and why you will need a correctly sized page Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 4 Comments    

Filed under: architecture, debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting

What a Heap of ... (Part Two)
29 June 07 05:14 AM

On Tuesday, we talked about Heap - what it is and how it works. Today we're going to continue our look at Heap. At the end of the last post we mentioned Look-Aside Lists and Low Fragmentation Heap. But before we dive into those, let's take a look at Heap Read More...

Postedby CC Hameed | 4 Comments    

Filed under: architecture, debugging, memory management, performance, troubleshooting