Windows or a Windows service reports an error in the event log
stating that the system is out of resources; however, according to Performance
Monitor and Windows Diagnostics, there is plenty of RAM
available. For example, if a large number of connections are made to SQL
Server, SQL Server reports an error 1450 - Insufficient System
Resources, even though this system has plenty of RAM available.
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The Windows kernel is running out of paged-pool memory. When Windows
starts, it calculates the amount of paged-pool memory available to the
kernel based on the amount of physical RAM in the system. The following lists describes the maximum values in Windows:
| • | In Windows NT, the maximum value for paged-pool memory is 192 MB. |
| • | In Windows 2000, the maximum value for paged-pool memory is 470 MB; the maximum value for non-paged-pool memory is 256 MB. |
If the kernel allocates all of its allotted paged-
pool memory, it will not be able to perform many tasks and will instead
return a STATUS_INSUFFICIENT_RESOURCES (0xC000009A) message.
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This behavior is by design. Windows currently uses 32-bit addressing for memory.
This only allows for 4 GB of addressable RAM, which must be divided into
various sections of virtual memory. The kernel only has 2 GB to divide up
and, in this distribution of addresses, paged-pool memory is allocated a
maximum of 192 MB. This is a restriction of the 32-bit addressing.
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