Windows 2003 Event 202 Paged Memory Pool Empty

[Sandy Wood]

Just inherited the task to administering our Win2003 Enterprise file server.
The server has 16GB of ram and is connected to our SAN for our organization's
file services.

This morning I was copying some files in the SAN and I started getting some
errors in copying large files. Seemed the server was out of storage. Looked
like a memory issue. In checking the System event log, I ran across an Event
2020 for the Srv service. It said "The server was unable to allocate from the
system paged pool because the pool was empty". Also, I couldn't Remote
Desktop into the server. I could login at the server console but it was so
low on resources it couldn't even load my profile.

One thing that stood out was that the server did not have any paging files.
Is this normal for a file server with several SAN drives and 16GB of ram?
Seems like a paging file might help?
--
Sandy Wood
Orange County District Attorney

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

>Just inherited the task to administering our Win2003 Enterprise file server.
>The server has 16GB of ram and is connected to our SAN for our organization's
>file services.
>
>This morning I was copying some files in the SAN and I started getting some
>errors in copying large files. Seemed the server was out of storage. Looked
>like a memory issue. In checking the System event log, I ran across an Event
>2020 for the Srv service. It said "The server was unable to allocate from the
>system paged pool because the pool was empty". Also, I couldn't Remote
>Desktop into the server. I could login at the server console but it was so
>low on resources it couldn't even load my profile.
>
>One thing that stood out was that the server did not have any paging files.
>Is this normal for a file server with several SAN drives and 16GB of ram?
>Seems like a paging file might help?

No, not having a page flle is not normal. It's possible it was set up
to run from RAM originally. Not smart of the admin who did this if
this is the case.

There's a bunch of Paged Pool Memory type KBs if you do a search so
I'd look there for sure.

Check the boot.ini and see if /PAE and /3GB is in there. /3GB might
require some granular tuning.

The one sole entry on eventid.net says it's likely a lack of a page
file.

- Thee Chicago Wolf