Usenet Explorer

Hi guys, any helpful info is greatly appreciated...

I've been getting this error message recently. The hard drive is not running out of space and there should be plenty of virtual memory available. The exact message is...

"Could not create thread, decrease number of tasks or add virtual memory."

I'm not sure if this is a statement describing what Newspro couldn't do, or a statement followed by suggestions how to resolve the issue.

Since the following settings have never changed, I'm reluctant to change them...
The number of tasks is set to the default settings of:
Regular tasks = 80
Easy=40, 6, 20
Hard=40, 40, 6

The only recent change to the system was the upgrading of Outpost firewall to the latest version.

I only recently switched to Giganews. For years I had been using either UseNetServer or NewsHosting without ever seeing this error message.

This machine has always had a dedicated swap drive (partition) set at 1500MB-1500MB and virtual memory was never a problem with any application. My Newspro activity is not any greater now than at any other time... it's probably less in fact.

The result of the error is- Newspro freezes while the error message box is visible. Then, when the message is closed, Newspro closes/crashes. I have to do a "restore the database", which of course means I lose all changes, including the headers, since the last time Newspro was closed properly. What a pain. BTW, "Database backup" is enabled and has been for years.

Thanks for any help.

System info:
Newspro version: 3.9
Windows XP SP1 (current patches- except SP2)
1GB Dual Channel DDR Memory (512x2)
AMD XP3400+ CPU

Just a quick update...
After realizing the exact message used a dash instead of a comma, so it read like this...

"Could not create thread- decrease number of tasks or increase virtual memory."

I expanded the swap file to 3GB, even though I know XP is capable of only using around 1.5GB. Still NP crashed. Then I also reduced the number of tasks to:

Regular = 60
Easy = 30, 6, 20
Hard = 30, 30, 6

Still NP crashed.

Previously, I neglected to mention that every time I've seen the error message/crash, NP has been saving headers to a HDD. It has happened during auto saves and during manual saves.
The last time I received the message, I noticed that NP isn't actually frozen behind the message... NP continues saving to the HDD. I just can't click on any part of NP as long as the message is up. So this time, to let the save continue, I didn't close the message... but eventually another message came up stating:

Out Of Memory

This one did lock up NP and neither error message could be clicked on (closed). I had to use a Ctrl-Alt-Del and close NP from Task Manager. I
checked memory usage while the save continued, prior to the actual lock-up and the page file usage was only 338M/3929M which is normal for this system while just above idle.

Alex you out there... any advice or suggestions?

Thanks.

Firstly, if you are still using Windows XP SP1, i'd strongly recommend upgrading to SP2 for the simple fact that quite a few security holes have been plugged recently and SP1 is no longer supported by microsoft.

Second, If the firewall has been recently upgraded, that could be the culprit. Can you disable the firewall temporarily as a test?

Third, I'd strongly recommend upgrading to Usenet Explorer. Much less resources are used with UE versus Newspro. Additionally, you get the built-in Usenet Search

I just reread your posts. how many headers do these group(s) have? you could be running into a memory issue due to the size of the newsgroup (i.e. number of headers). Try pruning some of the older headers to see if that resolves the issue.

Is it only with certain newsgroups? You may need to reset the database. It's possible the db is corrupt as well.

Hello. Thanks for the reply. I don't think the header load is too great. I have a few small groups I check on once in awhile, but mostly I just use NZB's and the Import group never gets anywhere near 500,000. All totaled, the headers might reach 500-750,000. But that's extreme and these errors started and continue to occur at far less header counts. Perhaps as low as 75,000-350,000. These are almost exclusively binary headers, not text. I'm diligent about deleting old headers.
Anyway, I reset the database and the error still occurred. I'll give the "no Outpost firewall" a go but I'm not holding much hope. I'm moderately efficient at configuring firewalls and I've given NP all the accesses I know it requires. I suppose this new version may be blocking something I'm unaware of thus far, but I think my next step will end up being to create a new database and delete the old one. It'll be a pain for sure, but this consistent error isn't any fun either. Also, I know it's an extreme long shot but I'll no longer be using GigaNews (over priced) after the 18th and I'm curious if the problems will persist since they never occurred prior to it's use.

I saw a different error message last night. I screen capped it but I don't think we can post attachments here. Anyway, it says...

Newspro 3900r internal error (4A7C4C/C0000005)
Restart the program to continue.

Fixing corrupted data files (when recurring):
...(snipped basic advice and message about emailing the error log)

As far as security... I have my own reasons for not applying SP2. This PC doesn't visit high risk websites and email is not viewed in HTML. That, combined with some common sense measures and a decently configured firewall provides this PC enough protection IMO. Superfluous apps are not run on this machine. In fact right now, including NP & this browser window, there are only 21 processes running (as seen in Windows Task Manager).

Thanks again for the NP advice and if you have any other suggestions, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Timogin

Couldn't create thread means the system has run out of resources, i think the number of threads a process can create is limited.

Usually it is because of third party incorrectly implemented driver (belonging to firewall or something else) which doesn't release threads of execution which exited. Check in the windows task manager whether the number of threads (it is somewhere can be added in optional columns) is not growing.

Drivers or hooks can sit in the process address space and have code executed when thread is created or destroyed, if some bug in it the application cannot do anything about it, since it is not the newsreader code (UE or newspro don't have any drivers - dll, they are just a single executable).

Probably you installed or updated something which has drivers and then the problem started maybe you remember what it is.

Thanks Alex. As another forum member, Dengle, has suggested, it's probably the latest version of my Firewall. Your description gives me some places to start looking....

After looking into it, I think I may have found the culprit. I use Agnitum's newest version of Outpost Firewall Pro which has a feature which monitors what it calls the Process Memory Injection seen here...
(http://www.agnitum.com/support/kb/artic ... 08&lang=en)

I've changed a couple settings. I'll report back the specific changes and how things turn out just in case other Outpost Firewall users start having problems.

depends how deep the bug is.

if you still see the bug and it is reproducible within measurable time (when downloading article bodies where threads are constantly created and closed), you can try to temporarily uninstall the firewall to do the ultimate test, unless uninstalled the driver is still there, although the firewall bug may be not triggered when certain function disabled, depends on the driver code which is black box for us.