WINDOWS EMBEDDED. February Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues. Copyright 2015 Dell Wyse

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1 WINDOWS EMBEDDED Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues. February 2016 Copyright 2015 Dell Wyse

2 Disclaimer THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this material in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell. PRODUCT WARRANTIES APPLICABLE TO THE DELL PRODUCTS DESCRIBED IN THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE FOUND AT: Performance of network reference architectures discussed in this document may vary with differing deployment conditions, network loads, firmware versions, additional software installed and the like. Third party products may be included in this document for the convenience of the reader. Inclusion of such third party products does not necessarily constitute Dell s recommendation of those products. Please consult your Dell representative for additional information. Trademarks used in this text: Dell, the Dell logo, Wyse, Dell Boomi, Dell Precision,OptiPlex, Latitude, PowerEdge, PowerVault, PowerConnect, OpenManage, EqualLogic, Compellent, KACE, FlexAddress, Force10 and Vostro are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other Dell trademarks may be used in this document. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and/or names or their products and are the property of their respective owners. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Created by: Roger Montalvo Page 2 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

3 Summary This document will explain what tools are available and how to troubleshoot Out of memory errors in Windows Embedded thin clients. Audience Customers, 1 st Level Support, and Systems Engineering Group Affected Products All WES7, WES7P, WE8S and W10IoT thin clients Requirements None Page 3 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

4 Table of Contents Summary... 3 Audience... 3 Affected Products... 3 Requirements... 3 Table of Contents... 4 Issues... 5 Troubleshooting Memory Problems... 5 Tools you can use Windows Task Manager... 5 Tools you can use FBWF Control... 6 Tools you can use - File Explorer... 7 Some memory default values... 7 How to test...8 What was tested... 8 How we tested... 9 Summary and Recommendations Error Messages Causes and Recommendations How to test for other Memory Errors Reference thin clients used for this document References Other Resources Warranty information Documentation: Community Forums: Evaluation Software: Firmware download: Thin client information: Page 4 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

5 Issues Dell Wyse thin clients are available with several different memory configurations, and this document will provide you with information that will allow you to understand the way memory is handled in all Dell Wyse Windows Embedded thin clients, why you are getting the Out of memory errors and how to troubleshoot these problems to determine the course of action for a resolution. Troubleshooting Memory Problems There are three built-in tools that we will be using to identify and adjust our memory requirements. These tools are: Windows Task Manager File Based Write Filter (FBWF) Control File Explorer Tools you can use Windows Task Manager Windows Embedded includes Task Manager. Select the Performance tab to review how your system memory resources are doing. If you want to see more details, click on the Resource Monitor button. Information on how to use the Performance tab, click here. Figure 1 - Windows Task Manager Figure 2 - Resource Monitor - Memory Page 5 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

6 Tools you can use FBWF Control This control is only available to the Administrator account when the FBWF is Enabled (green dot). You can control the size of FBWF by increasing or decreasing the Amount of RAM to be used for FBWF cache (MB) Figure 3 - FBWF Control If the application you are running is using the FBWF, you will see the value in the RAM used by FBWF box, as well as the percentage increase. Page 6 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

7 Tools you can use - File Explorer File Explorer will allow you to see if the size of your Z: (RAMDisk) drive is growing as your application is running. You may need to refresh the application to view the updated values. Some memory default values Figure 4 - File Explorer THIN CLIENT BIOS INFORMATION WINDOWS APPS WES7 Model 32/64 Bit Installed RAM System Memory Extended Memory Video RAM RAM Capacity RAM Disk FBWF Cache D90D7 * KB 2047 MB 384 MB Z90Q MB Z90QQ7P MB Z90QQ7P MB Table 1 - Memory Allocation Default Values Table 1 gives you the default values set for a Z90Q7 and a Z90QQ7P thin clients that were used for these tests. Note that these values may vary with different firmware versions and with different thin client model or peripheral devices installed. The values shown are from the BIOS, System Information App (RAM Capacity), RAMDisk for the RAM disk value and the FBWF Control NOTE: This table is provided as a reference and may not be identical to your case. * The D90D7 was included for reference only. Only the Z90Q7 and Z90QQ7P where used for testing. Page 7 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

8 How to test Login as the Administrator and open File Explorer, FBWF Control and Task Manager. Run the application you wish to test and monitor the memory usage using the three tools mentioned above. This should help you determine which value you need to adjust to reduce the chances of a failure caused by lack of memory. Remember that to make any of these changes permanent, you need to Disable FBWF. What was tested During this exercise, we tested the behavior of the Chrome browser on Windows Embedded thin clients. We noticed that when Chrome was installed, the thin client would give us about 30 minutes of use before it displayed the message The system has run out of available memory See Figure 5 below. Figure 5 - Low Memory Errors The top left hand corner of the Message normally gives you a clue on where the memory error is coming from. In this case the memory error is coming from the File Based Write Filter which indicates that we are running out of the memory allocated to the FBWF. Since the FBWF has warning trigger points at 85 and 90% of memory full, and a delay time to reboot of 120 seconds, we knew where the issue was probably coming from, but we needed a way to confirm it. Page 8 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

9 How we tested Used a Z90Q7 (32 Bit environment) with firmware Version 9.05 Build 858 and Internet Explorer 10 ( ) and installed Google Chrome (V m). Loaded the same three websites Youtube.com, CBS.com and CNN.com. On the YouTube tab, the browser was running videos, at CBS.com we had a TV episode running and CNN.com was just sitting idle on the homepage. We tested other thin client models with very similar results. Default settings: FEATURE Z90Q7 Z90QQ7P Firmware Build Version Number of Bits Installed Flash 16GB 16GB Installed RAM 4G 8GB RAMDisk size 100MB 1024MB FBWF Cache size 128MB 512MB Table 2 - Default Parameters This test provided the following insights on how they handled memory on the Z90Q7: Internet Explorer Temp files and cache files are written to the sys%\temp directory, which translates to It uses RAMDisk When the RAMDisk was full, the thin client continues to run and it does not crash. When you close the browser, the RAMDisk is flushed and the memory becomes available Google Chrome Temp files and cache files are written to the c:\user\username\appdata\local\google\chrome\u serdata directory, which translates to It uses FBWF When the FBWF is full, you get a warning message and eventually the thin client reboots after about 7 minutes. Increasing the FBWF cache to 200MB increased the reboot time to 10 minutes. When you close the browser, the FBWF remains full and eventually reboots. Table 3 - IE 10 and Chrome Comparison Testing was then done on a Z90QQ7P using Version 9.04 Build 864, since the behavior of IE does not seem to affect the FBWF, testing was concentrated on Google Chrome (V m) Browser only. Loaded the three same websites, Youtube.com, CBS.com and CNN.com. At youtube.com, the browser was running videos, at CBS.com we had a TV episode running and CNN.com was just sitting idle Page 9 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

10 at the homepage. The only change made to the default configuration was an increase in the FBWF to 512MB, since we already knew that it would fail with the default 256MB setting (See Table 3) This test provided the following insights on how Chrome uses memory on a Z90QQ7P: Google Chrome Temp files and cache files are written to the c:\user\username\appdata\local\google\chrome\userdata directory, which translates to It uses FBWF With the FBWF cache set to 512MB (Default is 256MB), it never went beyond the 53% mark, so it never crashed. When you close the browser, the FBWF remains the same. It only returns to normal after a reboot or a power down. Table 4 - Using Google Chrome on a 64bit Environment Figure 6 - After Almost 4 Hours of Up-time After almost 24 hours of uptime, the value for RAM Used by FBWF used sat at 53%. After 24 hours, the same value remained at 53%. Page 10 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

11 Summary and Recommendations While memory requirements for Terminal Server clients and brokers is easier to determine, using any third party web browser or application introduces a level of uncertainty since there are too many variables that are unknown to make an intelligent distribution of the memory without going through the steps outlined above. For this reason, if you have any of these situations: Need to use a web browser other than Internet Explorer Using the thin client for Web Applications only Using the thin client as a Web Kiosk Running third-party apps (java based or other) on the thin client The use of a WES7P or WE8S (both using 64 bit environments) thin client with 8GB of RAM is highly recommended. Let s be clear, these issues you are experiencing are due to the use of the thin client as a standalone device and not having enough memory resources to allocate. To address the different issues you may encounter, you will need to increase the amount of memory to the proper location(s), so care needs to be paid to the error message. The next section will address these error message and provide you some guidance on what is the recommended adjustment you need to make. Page 11 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

12 Error Messages Causes and Recommendations Message The system is running out of available memory The system has run out of available memory. It will reboot shortly Close programs to prevent memory loss Cause / Recommendation Cause: This message is coming from the FBWF. You are running out of FBWF. This message is triggered by Warning #1 on the FBWF settings (Figure 3) and it s an indication that you have reached the 85% threshold. Recommendation: Adjusting the amount of RAM assigned to the FBWF may address this issue. If the FBWF is set to 256MB, increase it to 512MB and test again. If you continue to get the same failure, increase it by another 256MB to 768MB and test again. Continue to increase if necessary until you minimize this issue. Cause: This message is coming from the FBWF. You are running out of FBWF. This message is triggered by Warning #2 on the FBWF settings (Figure 3) and it s an indication that you have reached the 90% threshold. The thin client will reboot within 2 minutes (120 seconds). Adjusting the amount of RAM assigned to the FBWF may address this issue. Cause: This message is coming from Windows. You have run out of System memory. This is normally an indication that you have too many applications open and the system has run out of System Memory. The message will give you the name of the application which caused the message. Recommendation: Closing a few apps or browser tabs should resolve the problem and allow you to continue. You may need to reduce the amount of memory used on the RAMDisk or FBWF to increase the amount of memory available to the programs. You may need to add more RAM to your thin client to resolve this issue permanently or move to a WES7P 64Bit platform if currently running on WES7 32Bit. Page 12 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

13 Message Close Programs to prevent information loss Or Low Disk Space (Z) Your Computer is low on memory Cause / Recommendation Cause: This message is coming from Windows. You have run out of RAMDisk memory. This is normally an indication that you have too many applications open and the system has run out of TEMP space which is store in the RAMDisk. Recommendation: Closing a few apps or browser tabs may resolve the problem and allow you to continue. Some possible solutions: Increase the size of the RAMDisk in order to resolve this issue permanently. Add more RAM to your thin client to resolve this issue permanently Move to a WES7P (or any other 64Bit) platform if currently running on WES7 32Bit. Cause: This message is coming from Windows. You have run out of System memory. This is normally an indication that you have too many applications open and the system has run out of System Memory. After a few minutes, the thin client may crash an application to recover some memory. Recommendation: Closing a few unnecessary browser tabs may give you enough memory back to resolve this issue, but in the end, adding memory to the thin client may be the only solution. Page 13 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

14 How to test for other Memory Errors The key is to understand where the problem is coming from in order to address it properly. Using Task Manager > Performance (4) you can gain an insight if your memory issues are caused by the System Memory running out of resources. o By monitoring the Physical Memory Usage you can observe if your memory is being used and by how much. If your usage is on the 80%+ you may start considering a memory upgrade if possible. o By monitoring the CPU Usage on the same area, you can see if your CPU is being overtaxed if while using your application the CPU stays at or close to 100% Reference thin clients used for this document Model: 3290 Flash: 16GB Memory: 4GB Firmware: 9.06 Build 869 FBWF Cache: 128MB RAMDisk Size: 100MB RAMDisk Max: 512MB Model: Z90D7 Flash: 16GB Memory: 4GB Firmware: 9.05 Build 858 FBWF Cache: 128MB RAMDisk Size: 100MB RAMDisk Max: 512MB Model: Z90D7 Flash: 16GB Memory: 2GB Firmware: 9.05 Build 858 FBWF Cache: 128MB RAMDisk Size: 100MB RAMDisk Max: 512MB Model: Z90Q7 Flash: 16GB Memory: 4GB Firmware: 9.05 Build 858 FBWF Cache: 128MB RAMDisk Size: 512MB RAMDisk Max: 512MB Model: Z90QQ7P Flash: 16GB Memory: 4GB Firmware: 9.02 Build 864 FBWF Cache: 256MB RAMDisk Size: 256MB RAMDisk Max: 1024MB Model: Z90QQ7P Flash: 16GB Memory: 8GB Firmware: 9.02 Build 864 FBWF Cache: 512MB RAMDisk Size: 512MB RAMDisk Max: 1024MB Table 5 - Reference Devices Page 14 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

15 References (1) Memory Limits for Windows and Windows Server Releases (2) See point #3. (3) Using VMware View Client for Windows (4) See Details about your computer s performance using Task manager Page 15 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse

16 Other Resources Warranty information: Documentation: Community Forums: Evaluation Software: Firmware download: Thin client information: Page 16 SEN-WES - Troubleshooting and Resolving Memory Issues.docx Dell Wyse