Windows runs out of memory

Hello,
I am running Parallels 10 with Windows 10 on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, 2013) 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 , 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 750 M 2048 MB
I use 3D Modeling software on the Windows side, and I frequently get the "Your computer is low on memory. Save your files and close these programs" warning and then the program crashes. This even occurs with no other programs open, although I frequently have Chrome open while modeling. I have tried using the Design preset, and shifting RAM and CPUs from minimum to maximum, to no avail. The program (Rhinoceros 5.0 64-bit) should not be using this much memory, and inside the program it says that I am using only a fraction of the available memory, so I do not think the program is the problem. Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks
Eric

 

How much memory have you devoted to the Windows 10 VM?
How much free space on your Windows 10 VM HDD?

 

I currently have 11000 MB, but previously was using it at 8000 MB.
Windows is telling me that I have used 463 GB out of 464 GB of storage. I'm confused by this, because my Macbook has 500 GB free, so I thought the PC could access this? When I save files from Windows applications, it's usually to folders on my Mac desktop (I use coherence view at any rate), so I'm not sure what's taking up that storage space.

 

It says 388 GB are in "System Files" for Windows.

 

It sounds like that's your problem.

 

I've run in to a very similar issue the last couple of days. Not sure if it has something to do with a parallels 11 update or not? I'm actually still running Win 8.1 because some of the hardware I have to use in my shop doesn't have drivers for 10 yet. But I saw the same thing today. My iMac hard drive has plenty of space left (600gb). I had allotted 64gb to my Windows VM, because I only run 1 piece of software out of it (CorelDraw) in coherence like you. Everything that I save in that program is saved to my desktop which is shared w/ parallels, and then I usually move those files to an external HD and delete it from my desktop. So I don't save anything in the VM. It was telling me I had 300+GB of video and photos on my VM. What?!? Maybe in iPhoto? But again, my Win VM was set up with 64GB of hard drive space so how could I have that much data in my VM? In fact, since I don't save anything on the VM, just on the Mac side, I'm not really sure what could be building up in that space especially since I only have that one software suite on that VM aside from what is stock. I don't know if it helps but I do manually go in to Win 8.1 every once in a while and run disk cleanup and defrag it. Pretty sure something is going over my head here, but I got everything back on track here... so far... I think. I was also noticing today that when I tried to update Paralells Tools, it would go to about 15% and I'd get an error message. I followed some trouble shooting and tried to uninstall Parallels Tools, but the VM couldn't because it didn't have enough memory to handle the uninstall.

So my fix... I ended up backing up my VM first. Then I shut down the VM and went in to my Hard Drive Settings in parallels for that VM and bumped it up to 100GB. After that, I restarted it and uninstalled Parallels tools. Rebooted again for that to take affect. Once rebooted I RE-installed Parallels tools. The only other thing I did was I also bumped up the RAM a bit. From there, it seems to be back on track. Been running this setup for a few years now with Parallels and have never seen this.

Not sure if this will help you, but hope it sheds some light on it. I'd also be interested to hear what might be taking up space, or collecting on a VM when you save everything on the Mac side and don't save things to your VM? Thanks!

 

Thanks, ya I don't understand how bumping it up any more could help, because I definitely am not taking up 463 GB of 464 GB of storage on Windows. This seems to definitely be the problem as RAM changes do not effect the frequent memory crashes. Any further explanation/solutions would be greatly appreciated!

 

Don't forget that all Windows updates are saved, partly so you can uninstall them, and Windows makes its own restore points before each installation. Both of these can chew up large amounts of space, especially over time. Finally, there's the page file which is usually a multiple of your RAM.

 

Thanks very much for getting me on the right track! I deleted some of the old updates, etc. which freed up 40 GB of space, so I am no longer having memory issues, but I am still concerned about the 388 GB System File. This is still very large, so I'm looking for a way to reduce that, or I guess I am wondering if that has to do with the memory allocated by Parallels.

 

Hmm the problem seems to be back, and now I have 60 GB free on the Windows HDD, so perhaps something else is happening. Attached is the warning I get before applications close

 

A quick google suggests that Rhinoceros has/has had quite a few memory (RAM) issues with renders. Is your Windows 10 version is 32 bit or 64 bit? If it is 64 bit, then you will need to increase the RAM available to the VM. My quick google suggests Rhinoceros users consider 8GB as "minimal". At least one person was having out of memory issues with 32GB, albeit it was a complex render.
You may have better luck on the Rhinoceros forum if such a thing exists.