ArcMap won't release RAM/physical memory

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04-01-2014 11:28 PM
MårtenKarlson
New Contributor
hi

i'm not sure this is the right topic for this question, but as the Spatial Analyst is what I mainly work with, i'll post it here.

My problem is related to memory. ArcMap (10.2) wont release RAM after being closed, but cahce it somehow. It's the only program in my laptop that behaves this way, and it was reinstalled recently as an attempt to get rid of the problem. It's quite cumbersome as i from time to time have to quit my geoprocessing, save and restart my lap. I cant run models with more than a few tools either, but i can run them separately....

I'm using windows 7.

i would be most grateful for any hints on this...
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5 Replies
curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor
Can you share a few more system specifications -

Windows 32 or 64 bit?
Physical RAM?
Virtual memory settings?

You may want to verify your specs against the ArcGIS Desktop system requirements.
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FraserHand
Occasional Contributor III

Hi There,

Did you ever find a solution to this? I have a similar thing with server.

Thanks,

Fraser

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MartinAmeskamp
Occasional Contributor II

Hi Mårten, there are some tools to analyze this, but in oder to make sense of the information, you need to have a basic understanding of Windows memory management ...

Anyway, look for RAMMap in the Sysinternals Suite: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx.

Martin

PS No, I have never come across this behaviour before.

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MårtenKarlson
New Contributor

hi

ok, well, i guess feeling confident with the software is only halfway these days, you need computer engineering skills as well....you can never get enough of knowledge though=)

i'll check out the link and see if i get any smarter. Probem's still there though. However, i was never sure it had anything to do with ArcMap, but it has happened when ArcMap was the only program running.

the OS on my computer is Windows 7, 64 bit. It's a client version, managed under the WICKS system, which i know little about. That said, i'm not in charge over the computers settings and processing environment in any way. I've not interfered previously with the virtual memory settings, but that might as well have something to do with this. I'm not sure i can access those settings though..

Thanks for the replies, if i managed to figure out a solution, i'll post it here.

/Mårten, Sweden

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curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Can you be more specific about the workflow that is causing this problem? Are there specific tools involved? Are you running Python scripts or models that iterate? If so, it's important to make sure you delete layers and table views so RAM doesn't fill up with orphan layers.

Some GP tools do have memory leaks under some conditions, i.e. they do not release all their memory when they are completed. With some workflows you simply need to restart ArcMap from time to time to free up physical memory.

Dealing with memory leaks in Python scripts in 10.0

Re: Diagnosing memory leak?

You can use the subprocess module to launch a tool to run in a separate process: See Chris Snyder‌ 's post here:

https://community.esri.com/message/164535#164535

If this is a python scripting thing, Python has a nice standard library module, psutil, which may help in diagnosing the issue if it is in a script by looking at which tools are eating memory.

psutil 2.1.3 : Python Package Index

import psutil

"{} MB used".format(psutil.virtual_memory().used / (1024 * 1024))

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