Slowdowns and Not Enough Memory to Proceed errors

tivolo

Starting recently (perhaps with the R44.28 release?), I've noted that I must exit and restart Quicken frequently (i.e. once or twice per day) or it gets progressively slower and, eventually, starts throwing up "Not Enough Memory to Proceed" errors. I used to leave Quicken open for days on end and had no problems.

Assuming this is a memory leak, I looked at Task Manager and it shows only 135MB of physical RAM in use by the qw.exe process. My machine has 32 GB of RAM with only about 30% used, so there's plenty of memory available. Of course, I know such errors can also come from exhaustion of other resources, such as Handles, GDI resources, etc., so I'll try to look at those next time this occurs.

One thing I have noted is that doing a One-Step Update seems to correlate to the slowdown becoming worse, and the memory error tends to occur when reconciling transactions immediately after the update. I don't know that this is actually causal, but wanted to mention the correlation since it seems others are having issues with One Step Update as well (although I see no mention of the memory error).

batstang2000

Mine has been doing the same thing. First, every time I try to enter anything or just press the Tab key, it lags. I eventually get fed up and try to exit the program and then the "Not enough memory to proceed" message pops up. I have to go to Task manager and kill it. Start over, rinse, repeat..........

tivolo

Good to know I'm not the only one, I guess. The next time this happens, I'll try to collect better info on resource usage of the app to see if there's a clearer culprit in terms of resource exhaustion.

UKR

To help with this situation, could I trouble you to show us the File Information view?

- Click Help in the Menu Bar. Shift+click About Quicken and it'll give you the File Information view. Please capture an image snapshot of this File Information box to a JPG, PNG or GIF file. Drag and drop this file from Windows File Explorer into your next Comment here. 

What Windows version are you using?

tivolo

Here's the info you requested (see qw-version.png), along with the results of further troubleshooting I've done. I'm running Windows 11 Home with the latest (22H2) update applied.

What I've discovered is that, as I click into each account for the first time during a process session, some number of User and GDI resources are consumed (User objects in particular). This happens once per account, presumably as Quicken loads its register window into the process space. Because Quicken keeps registers open in the background even when you switch to another account, those resources are not de-allocated until the process closes (which is expected).

However, when I do a One Step Update, Quicken then leaks another large set of User and GDI objects, the size of the leak being proportional to the number of accounts I've clicked into (i.e. that are open in memory). For example, if I do a One Step Update immediately after launching the program and without opening any accounts, there is effectively no leak. However, if I toggle thru 10 or so accounts to load the registers into memory and then perform a One Step Update, I can leak hundreds or even thousands of User/GDI objects (see the qw-objects.png for a view of Task Manager after an update).

Because the Windows process limit for User objects is 10K, I only need to update twice to exhaust the User object limit. Quicken then crashes, sometimes after showing the "Not Enough Memory to Proceed" error. I uploaded a crash report from Quicken's crash screen today.

Again, this behavior seems new. I used to be able to run Quicken days on end, performing 1 or 2 updates per day with no issues. Now, I must restart daily to clear this resource leak.

UKR

@tivolo,

If you haven't done so already, I'd say it's time to call Quicken Support on the phone and report this memory leak issue.  Let them do a screen share session with you to review the situation on your computer, to determine the nature of the problem and to figure out how to fix it.

Quicken Support:

• To contact Quicken Support, please use this link only:
  https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support  and select Chat or Phone support.
• Support is only available during posted hours of operation
• The phone number can be found at the support website.
• To start Chat or see the support phone number, your browser must allow popup windows from https://www.quicken.com
  See https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7870684/faq-talk-to-support-does-not-respond#latest
• If you are eligible for Premium Support (purchased separately or included as part of your subscription to Quicken 2018+ Premier or HB&R) call the number that can be found at the top of your My Account page at https://www.quicken.com/my-account  (US) or https://www.quicken.com/canada/my-account (Canada) when you log in with your Quicken ID. Place the call using the phone whose number is recorded in your account profile.
• Other links or phone numbers found elsewhere on the Internet, even in some posts or emails received from other Community members, may not be from Quicken or may not be up-to-date. Use those at your own risk.
• Unlike other so-called "Quicken support providers", the real Quicken Support is free for all currently supported versions.

jldavid47

I am also having this problem and posted it here:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20309472

I reinstalled Quicken as suggested and right now it is running fine but I have not yet done a one step update. It will be interesting to see what happens once I do.

I also have 32 GB of memory. In my case, only about half was being used and Quicken was using about 485 MB. I've been having this problem since at least 44.27 and maybe earlier. I'm guessing a memory leak bug was introduced in a recent update. Maybe it is something else but nothing has changed on my side.

jldavid47

@tivolo

I think you are onto something regarding One Step Update. Today as I was doing a One Step Update the program just froze. It said "Complete" on each institution but then did nothing. I waited 45 minutes then killed Quicken, restarted and reran One Step Update. It then ran fine and finished within a few minutes.

I know software development is tricky but introducing new bugs in updates is unacceptable. Stuff that worked fine shouldn't suddenly be broken by an update.

jldavid47

I would encourage anyone who is seeing this problem to report the it through Quicken. From the menu bar go to

Help -> Report a problem...

tivolo

Thanks@jldavid47. I've reported the problem thru Quicken and may try to call as well. Reproducing the issue is very easy for me: simply open/click-thru the registers for all (or just several) accounts for which One Step Update is enabled. Then run/repeat the One Step Update process until Quicken crashes (or hangs). For me, since I have 20 or so accounts with One Step Update enabled, it only takes 2 iterations of One Step Update to crash if I've opened them 10+ of them.

As a workaround, simply restart Quicken prior to running the One Step Update (and run the update prior to opening the registers for your accounts). The fewer open registers, the smaller the leak and the longer until Quicken crashes.

If you'd like to actually see the leak, you can do so by launching Task Manager and clicking on the Details tab. If you don't have the "User objects" and "GDI objects" columns in your view, right-click the column header area, click "Select Columns" and add those two columns. Then, locate the qw.exe process in the list and note the values in the User/GDI columns. When either of those values hit 10K, the process will crash. So, note the current values, return to Quicken, run a One Step Update and then note the new values. Repeat until you hit 10K. If you want it to go faster, just click into more accounts to load their registers into memory.

Marty

I have a problem that may or may not be the same. It started recently with 44.28. While doing one step update, it seems to get stuck. the screen seems to switch between quicken one step update and other open windows on my computer for other programs. I can't make it stop most of the time and I can't close any windows. It may eventually stop. One time I had to end task to get it to close. Not ideal. I ran validate, not super validate and it was fine. I don't know if I had looked at multiple registers before running one step update, but will check next time. Tonight, I ran one step update one financial institution at a time and it worked. then, when I was accepting transactions, on the last account, it froze and screen flashed to different programs open on my computer. I have plenty of memory available. switching between accounts has be slow. All this is new. I've been using quicken for 30 years, so have seen a lot.

Marty

@tivolo. I just tried what you suggested. I closed quicken, reopened and re-ran OSU. It worked fine. I then opened the registers from 10 or so accounts. By the time I was done, the user object was up to 6,000. I then ran OSU again. It took much longer, got funky by the end of the process. It finished, but the user object ran up to 8921. Since I've never tracked the user objects before, I don't know enough to know if that is a problem. But, I will be closing quicken for now before running OSU. This seems like a problem. thanks for flagging it.

jldavid47

@tivolo I ran a little experiment this morning. I had run OSU twice before looking at User and GDI objects. When I looked the counts were 6905 and 4583 respectively. I ran OSU 3 more times. The user objects increased to 7692, 8111 and 8532 and the GDI objects increased to 5392, 5833 and 6274. All growth, no "garbage collection" apparently.

I then restarted Quicken. The user/GDI objects were 583/262. Then I navigated to 8 accounts, nothing more. The user objects climbed rapidly: 1121, 1656, 2190, 2725, 3014, 3211, 3535, 3732. I then clicked on the "Bills & Income" tab. User objects increased to 4641. (GDI objects climbed proportionately as well). The number never decreases and each action results in a jump in objects. It isn't just OSU. It's everything! Wow.

tivolo

@jldavid47 You're correct -- the counts go way up even without OSU. Each register you open consumes an inordinate number of User/GDI objects, so if you have a lot of accounts and open all their registers (or open other screens, like Bills & Income), you might crash even without OSU. To some degree, some consumption is expected because Quicken never unloads registers once their loaded, but the per-register loss seems quite high. On the plus side, that loss appears to be one-time loss per register, unlike the OSU which leaks each time it's done.

@Marty Glad you were able to reproduce. The User/GDI objects are related to the "window manager" portion of the OS, so when these values get high (even prior to the 10K limit), things start going sideways in terms of opening windows, moving between screens, tabbing between fields, opening menus -- almost anything UI-related.

As an ex-Windows software developer myself, I am unfortunately familiar with these kinds of resource leaks. They are much more common than normal "memory leaks" but generally stem from the same kinds of code errors.

Does the Quicken Support team monitor these forums? I'd like to get this info to them but dread calling as I assume I'll have to pass thru their Tier 1 support first (i.e., run file validation, uninstall/reinstall quicken, reboot computer, ...). Again, as an ex-engineer, I know the obstacles companies erect to keep users from getting an actual engineer on the phone/chat.

Chris_QPW

@tivolo You might try Help -> Report a Problem. From what we have been told that does go to the development group.

tivolo

Thanks, @Chris_QPW -- I've done exactly that, so hopefully that gets thru to the right team.

jldavid47

[Removed - Rant]

jldavid47

Installed 45.7 and it's no better. Ran OSU this morning and went from about 4600 User objects to about 8000 with the corresponding flashes and slowdowns. If I don't restart I'm sure it will hang on tomorrow's OSU.

tivolo

@jldavid47 I tried it too, especially since I noticed they've updated some of the UI around online updates (in particular, if you "Update Quotes" from the investment screen, there's a new progress screen that I'd never seen before). But I also saw no improvement.

Marty

I just did my first OSU since 11/9. I did it first thing after opening Quicken. Both ODU and GDI objects were below 500 at the start. OSU finished quickly and smoothly. ODU/GDI Objects are 1698/1211 respectively when I finished. @tivolo, I can't thank you enough for figuring out this leak. I will try to report it too. If I had to guess the leak was created recently. I've not had this problem before. I often leave Quicken open for long periods and move through many registers. I've always done that but the problem is definitely recently. I've had both the Charles schwab and Chase conversion to Express Web connect issues that many have had over the last few months and there have been so many updates to try to fix those messes. Who knows if that is related.

tivolo

Glad this helped, @Marty. I also tend to open Quicken and leave it running for days (or week+ on end), and only started getting these issues in the past couple of months (after using Quicken this way for 20+ years). Now I restart daily before running OSU and have been stable since.

Although it's not terribly important, I did some more observations and it seems the issue occurs after Quicken has received the transaction data from all of the FIs and is looping thru the open registers to update the "transaction import" section at the bottom to show any new transactions. I can see the User/GDI objects climb quickly after all of the FIs have responded but before I get control back. This would make sense given that the leak size is proportional to the number of open registers.

dc0063

I've similar issues but with slightly different solution and predates most of the recent updates.  Running a current Win10 and Quicken subscription with 16Gb. 
 When running Q with under 8 Gb allocated, no problem and no matter how long Q has been running.  When my memory usage creeps to 8.5 or so, Quicken becomes very squirrely to the point of flashing between several Q screens and requiring a forced stop.
However, if I kill my browser [Chrome is a hog], allocated memory drops below8Gb and Q runs without a problem - even if open for days and used consistently. 

tivolo

@dc0063 That definitely sounds like a different behavior as it would seem to point to some shared resource as opposed to the User/GDI objects, which are allocated on a per-process basis. When you kill Chrome, are you saying that Quicken will recover without a restart? Or is it that, even after restarting, if the system memory usage is > 8GB, Quicken will immediately behave badly (i.e. the problem is only resolved by reducing memory usage -- a restart of Quicken doesn't provide any relief)?

One thing that might be interesting for you to check, just to be sure that what you're seeing isn't related to the issue we're having, is to check the User/GDI object counts in Task Manager for the qw.exe process when Quicken starts going wonky. The symptom of flashing screens/hanging certainly feels like the types of behaviors you might see with a resource leak, so it would be good to eliminate that as the issue.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

jldavid47

This is what happens when you start to bump up close to 10,000 User Objects. Note that qw.exe is "Not responding" as in not being able to function. 

dc0063

@tivolo
Agreed. Thanks for the suggestions.  Though, pushing it to that state is always scary. 

Jerry Pederson

I have also been experiencing the same scenario since installing R44.28

Quicken Jared

Hello everyone, 

I apologize that you are being affected by these issues with slow performance and even crashes. Thank you for coming to the Quicken Community to discuss this with us. 

We are aware of this issue and it is now being investigated. I have forwarded the information you have relayed to us to the proper channels. Currently, there are no ETAs regarding a resolution, although the matter is being looked into. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience.

Feel free to reach out with any other questions or concerns you may have. 

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

(CTP-4998)

tivolo

@Quicken Jared -- Thank you, Jared! I definitely appreciate you escalating/investigating this! If there's any other info I can provide, please let me know.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

andrewwarrenjone

@tivolo You are THE BOSS! I have had an issue where after leaving Quicken open for a day or two, or entering lots of transactions the UI would sort of freeze. I could select a menu item and the menu would be black. New windows would open completely blank. I monitored GDI object usage and UI, as you describe, went haywire at 9,998 GDI objects opened (presumably because it couldn't open more). There's clearly a resource leak. It also noticeably slows down as the GDI objects increase.

This has happened to me for almost TWO YEARS so I don't think it's a new bug. In fact, I submitted reports on several occasions though I never realized the underlying problem. I just became used to restarting Quicken. Now I can tell when it's about to freeze and restart gracefully, ha. Hope it's fixed soon!