XP guru question

XP changed about the time I installed I.E.7. Now there seems to be a limit to the number of windows a user can have open. I usually have 30 or more I.E. tabs open and I have 10 or 15 other programs open. But then I hit a limit. No more windows or tabs will open, even the context window you get when you right click. If I right click a link in I.E. to open another tab, the context window won't appear. If I try to start another program, the program won't run, or if it does, the window will be blank. There is no error message, and no entries in the event log. If I close some windows, I can then add more until once again I hit this limit.

Occasionally when I try to start another program, I will get this little window:


I don't recall this happening before I installed I.E.7 and maybe a bunch of other updates at the same time.

If I fast user switch to another user, I can run normally and open lots of windows. I don't think I'm running out of memory and I don't think I'm running out of handles. I have 1 gig of memory. I temporarily added another gig, but the problem didn't change. Apparently it's not a limitation of the computer or of XP. It seems to be some kind of limit for a given user account. I've seen nothing about this on the internet. What is going on?

Remember those nasty pop-ups that'd just blast windows open? I bet there's a user environment variable that got set to a lower level as a security update. Maybe just to prevent that from just going on for way too long. I'm just guessing though. I'll check it out in the morning.

For the meantime, you might want to go over to the (... looks it up ...) OOPS. You can't manually change whether new IE windows open in a different process any longer. (KB Article)

Maybe it's the paging file size limit. Caveat emptor but here's how to change that.

I'm poking at things. Sorry. Gotta go to sleep. I'll try to check it out in the morning.

Easy answer: Go with either Opera, or K-MeleonCCF ME.

30 IE tabs open? Why not have most closed and use bookmarks when a page is needed?

Crud. I had a cool XP utility program that eliminated the "limiter" XP used to limit network connections. I think the built in limit was 30 and you could change it to 9,999. I think it was built in to force network admins to buy Windows Server 2003.

-or- I could be wrong.

PhotonBoy said:

30 IE tabs open? Why not have most closed and use bookmarks when a page is needed?

Click to expand...

I sometimes wonder that myself. Actually I do have a large number of bookmarks, and many pages I download and store locally. Especially pdf files.

I have a dialup connection so re-downloading a page takes some time. I guess I'm also disorganized. I'm always researching a project and I skip around researching various parts of it. I'll be looking for the latest op-amps or transistors or whatever, and the specs on their data sheets, and whether they are available on-line, what they cost. And let's see, yesterday it was coaxial-power jacks of certain sizes, a DMM with particular capabilities, etc. etc. etc.

I do shutdown XP every few days for one reason or another, but within a day I'll have it maxed out again.

I guess the thing that most irritates me is there is no indication from XP that I have hit a limit. And I can't find a damned thing on the internet. I can't figure out what to search for on Google. Putting "windows" and "limit" in a google search gets me 7,720,000 hits, and as far as I can tell, none have anything to do with this. By the way, the first hit is called "Ubuntu, Windows -Limit CPU usage". Probably not what I want.

axolotls said:

Crud. I had a cool XP utility program that eliminated the "limiter" XP used to limit network connections. I think the built in limit was 30 and you could change it to 9,999. I think it was built in to force network admins to buy Windows Server 2003.

-or- I could be wrong.

Click to expand...

Actually, it's a limit on the number of half-open connections, meant to reduce the speed at which worms can attempt to infect more computers.

I don't know the maximum number of tabs I've ever opened, but I can vouch for it being definitely over 40 at once in one instance of IE7 (malware analyses at VirusTotal.com plus reporting malware to various security vendors). However, that's on Vista, not XP. As a fact-finding step, you might take a peek at your system's Event Viewer logs for any clues.

mechBgon said:

I don't know the maximum number of tabs I've ever opened, but I can vouch for it being definitely over 40 at once in one instance of IE7 (malware analyses at VirusTotal.com plus reporting malware to various security vendors). However, that's on Vista, not XP. As a fact-finding step, you might take a peek at your system's Event Viewer logs for any clues.

Click to expand...

I guess I usually have about 40 I.E. tabs, around 8 instances of Windows Explorer and around 10 or 12 other programs running.

There is nothing in the event log. It just hits a limit with no warning anywhere.

It's not important really. Now that I know it's symptoms. I did spend a lot of time on wild goose chases. I thought it was memory, but proved that wasn't the case. Then I thought it might be handles until one time I saw some program, probably I.E. that went crazy and used 60 thousand, with no ill effect.

It took me months to realize it only affected the single user and other users were okay.

eluminator said:

I have a dialup connection so re-downloading a page takes some time.

Click to expand...

Okay, that makes sense. I'd forgotten what that's like.

eluminator said:

I have a dialup connection so re-downloading a page takes some time.

Click to expand...

once I was visiting a friend who had DSL and I was used to dialup.

I was surfing with firefox to show him something, when he asked "why are you doing that?"

I realized I was opening several tabs for different pages. wasn't necessary at his house. twas a dialup thing.