How to determine Paged and Nonpaged pool limits

  • Article

This is yet another article on how to determine Paged and Nonpaged pool limits. This method does not require internet access on the computer that we want to analyse.

I recently had a customer that experienced pool exhaustion on a failover cluster and this method helped to understand the effects of various changes (e.g. /3GB, PAE, more/less RAM) on the pool limits.

Steps

  1. Download Process Explorer.
  2. Create a folder e.g. <driveletter:>\symbols.
  3. Download the applicable symbols e.g. Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 x86 retail symbols, all languages.
  4. Install the Symbols MSI or extract the files, depending on the installation source.
    (Can be done on a non-prod computer)
  5. Copy the symbols to <driveletter:>\symbols.
  6. Run ‘procexp’.
  7. Select Options > Configure Symbols.
  8. Type <driveletter:>\symbols in Symbols Path.
  9. Select View > System Information.
  10. Note the values for Paged, Paged Limit and Nonpaged, Nonpaged Limit.