Knowledge Base

FIX: Running Stack Dumper Can Cause Memory Leak of Virtual Bytes

Article ID: 278372

Article Last Modified on 3/14/2006

APPLIES TO

Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q278372

BUG #: 58327 (SQLBUG_70)

SYMPTOMS

Stack dumps are diagnostic information that are used to troubleshoot problems. Stack dumps can occur when SQL Server encounters an exception or assertion, or explicitly when support engineers run certain diagnostics.

The generation of stack traces by SQL Server can result in a virtual byte memory leak. When SQL Server is installed on computers with 2Gb or more of physical RAM, specific errors indicating that virtual memory is low in the SQL Server process space can occur, depending on the frequency of the leak and the available virtual memory:

Two examples of these error messages are:

Error: 17802, Severity: 18, State: 3
Could not create server event thread.

-and-

WARNING: Clearing procedure cache to free contiguous memory.

Buffer Distribution: Stolen=3454 Free=2540 Procedures=138
Inram=0 Dirty=1108 Kept=35 I/O=0, Latched=0, Other=214821

Buffer Counts: Committed=222096 Target=222096 Hashed=215964
InternalReservation=547 ExternalReservation=0 Min Free=512

Procedure Cache: TotalProcs=8 TotalPages=138 InUsePages=138
Dynamic Memory Manager: Stolen=3556 OS=497 General=1706
Query Plan=755 Optimizer=0 Utilities=9 Connection=1583
Global Memory Objects: Resource=1119 Locks=163 XDES=1
SQLCache=90 Replication=5 LockBytes=2 ServerGlobal=20

Query Memory Manager: Grants=0 Waiting=0 Maximum=164370 Available=164370

WORKAROUND

Rename the SQLImage.dll and DBGHelp.dll files in the \BINN folder for the SQL Sever installation to different file names. If you are running on a Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer, this step is enough to avoid the problem.

If you are running on a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0-based computer, you also must replace IMAGEHLP.dll and DBGHelp.dll in %systemroot%\system32 with the copies of these files from Windows 2000.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server 7.0. This problem has been corrected in U.S. Service Pack 3 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

274799 INF: How to Obtain Service Pack 3 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) 1.0

For more information, contact your primary support provider.

Additional query words: 17802

Keywords: kbbug kbfix KB278372

Microsoft KB Archive/278372

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