I get the ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES (1450) after opening a 445 MB file, seeking to some offset within that file, and then trying to read 4 bytes. I have an open ticket with Microsoft now to try and resolve the problem, but it appears the "solution" will more than likely be to increase the PagedPoolSize registry setting as described at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312362
Probably you have a buggy device driver on your system which is leaking paged pool. There's a kernel-memory debug monitoring tool you can use to investigate who is allocating memory, I forget what it's called.
I see that I never wrote a real clear conclusion to this post. In my case the actual issue that was causing my trouble was a buggy graphics card driver that was allocating kernel "paged pool" memory and leaking it, so over time it would use up all the paged pool and I wouldn't be able to get anything through except tiny IOs. That was the cause of the ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES.
On a well behaved system without buggy drivers ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES should be pretty hard to trigger.
(there are some driver debugging tools that can show you these kernel allocations if you need to track down one of these issues)
This was also back on Win32 where these issues were much more common. With 64-bit Windows the limits are much higher and harder to hit.
July 13, 2020 at 10:15 AM
ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES is the fucking devil.
So far as I can tell, the only people in the history of the universe who have actually pushed the Windows IO system really hard are me and
SQL Server. When I go searching around the web for my problems they are always in relation to SQL Server.
I don't have a great understanding of this problem yet. Hopefully someone will chime in with a better link. This is what I have found so far :
You receive error 1450 ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES when you try to create a very large file in Windows XP SystemPages Core Services Sysinternals Forums - not enough resources problem - Page 1 Overlapped WriteFile fails with code 1450 [Archive] - CodeGuru Forums Novell Eclipse FTK file io How to use the userva switch with the 3GB switch to tune the User-mode space to a value between 2 GB and 3 GB GDI Usage - Bear Error Message ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES (1450) Download details Detection, Analysis, and Corrective Actions for Low Page Table Entry Issues Counter of the Week Symptoms Lack of Free System Page Table Entries (PTEs) and Error Message ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES (1450 Comparison of 32-bit and 64-bit memory architecture for 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
Basically the problem looks like this :
Windows Kernel has a bunch of internal fixed-size buffers. It has fixed-size (or small max-size) buffers for Handles, for the "Paged Pool" and
"Non-Paged Pool", oh and for PTEs (page table entries). You can cause these resources to run out at any time and then you start getting weird errors. The exact limit is
unknowable, because they are affected by what other processes are running, and also by registry settings and boot.ini settings.
I could make the error go away by playing with those settings to give myself more of a given resource, but of course you can't expect consumers
to do that, so you have to work flawlessly in a variety of circumstances.
In terms of File IO, this can hit you in a whole variety of crazy ways :
1. There's a limit on the number of file handles. When you try to open a file you can get an out-of-resources error.
2. There's a limit on the number of Async ops pending, because the Kernel needs to allocate some internal resources and can fail.
3. There's a limit on how many pages of disk cache you can get. Because windows secretly runs everything you do through the cache
(note that this is even true to some extent if you use FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING - there are a lot of subtleties to when you actually
get to do direct IO which I have written about before), any IO op can fail because windows couldn't allocate a page to the disk cache
(even though you already have memory allocated in user space for the buffer).
4. Even ignoring the disk cache issue, windows has to mirror your memory buffer for the IO into kernel address space. I guess this is
because the disk drivers talk to kernel memory so you user virtual address has to be moved to kernel for the disk to fill it. This can
fail if the kernel can't find a block of kernel address space.
5. When you are sure that you are doing none of the above, you can still run into some other mysterious shit about the kernel failing
to allocate internal pages for its own book-keeping of IOs. This is error 1450 (0x5AA) , ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES.
The errors you may see are :
ERROR_NOT_ENOUGH_MEMORY = too many AsyncIO 's pending
Solution : wait until some finish and try again
ERROR_NOT_ENOUGH_QUOTA = single IO call too large
Solution : break large IOs into many smaller ones (but then beware the above)
ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES = failure to alloc pages in the kernel address space for the IO
Solution : ???
So I have made sure I don't have too many handles open. I have made sure I don't have too many IO ops pending. I have made sure my IO ops are not
too big. I have done all that, and I still randomly get ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES depending on what else is happening on my machine.
I sort of have a solution, which seems to be the standard hack
solution around the net - just sleep for a few millis and try the IO again. Eventually it magically clears up and works.
BTW while searching for this problem I found this code snippet :
Novell Eclipse FTK file io .
It's quite good. It's got a lot of the little IO magic that I've only recently learned, such as using "SetFileValidData" when extending files for async writes,
and it also has a retry loop for ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES.
Further investigation reveals that this problem is not caused by me at all - the kernel is just out of paged pool. If I do a very small IO (64k or less) or if I
do non-overlapped IO, or if I just wait and retry later, I can get the IO to go through. Oh, and if you use no buffering, that also succeeds.
"03-12-09 - ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES"
4 Comments -
I get the ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES (1450) after opening a 445 MB file, seeking to some offset within that file, and then trying to read 4 bytes. I have an open ticket with Microsoft now to try and resolve the problem, but it appears the "solution" will more than likely be to increase the PagedPoolSize registry setting as described at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312362
August 17, 2010 at 9:25 AM
Probably you have a buggy device driver on your system which is leaking paged pool. There's a kernel-memory debug monitoring tool you can use to investigate who is allocating memory, I forget what it's called.
August 17, 2010 at 9:41 AM
7 years on, this is still the most useful assessment of root causes for this error. Thank you :)
November 18, 2017 at 8:52 AM
I see that I never wrote a real clear conclusion to this post. In my case the actual issue that was causing my trouble was a buggy graphics card driver that was allocating kernel "paged pool" memory and leaking it, so over time it would use up all the paged pool and I wouldn't be able to get anything through except tiny IOs. That was the cause of the ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES.
On a well behaved system without buggy drivers ERROR_NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES should be pretty hard to trigger.
(there are some driver debugging tools that can show you these kernel allocations if you need to track down one of these issues)
This was also back on Win32 where these issues were much more common. With 64-bit Windows the limits are much higher and harder to hit.
July 13, 2020 at 10:15 AM