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Help Ramping RAM - Apps crashing

C

Christars

Newbie
So, I have this problem which is getting quite crippling, and I'd dearly like some assistance.

After I swith on my mobile, I experience that the RAM usage quickly grows to dangerous levels, even while not using the phone - frequently, it escalates to about 300 MB (out of 329) in about half an hour or less. Even if I tell it to "Empty Memory", the phone simply states that "0 programs closed", and nothing happens.

This is rather serious, as at this point, if I attempt to open an app, write a sms or even receive a call, the application has a big chance of immediately crashing, and I am returned to the home screen. At times, the phone itself even crashes completely, forcing me to restart it.

I'd very much appreciate any help possible with this! I'm not sure what information to give, but I'm running 2.3.3, what seems to be the newest software (indeed, I can't remember having such problems on earlier versions, but it might be coincidental). I also have lots of "free space", so it shouldn't be that, but honestly I'm not too computer-savvy, so I wouldn't know.

Thank you for your time!
 
Has it just started happening? Do you recall installing an app just before or around the time the issue started occurring?

Also, if you head to Running Services in the manage applications menu, is there anything there that looks like it should be taking more memory than it should?
 
The problem is not completely new; I experienced it some time back, as reported here:

http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s/440963-70-ram-usage-normal.html

(I assume people thought I was just answering a closed case; in any event it was not responded to)

After that, the problem didn't really go away, but the ramping didn't go to such critical levels that it bothered me (only about 250 MB or so, I guess). At this point, I should probably point out that lately it has consistently been ramping up the RAM, but exactly how fast it happens seems less regular. I'm still looking for what factors might be affecting it.

In the Running Services-menu, nothing reports using more than 10 MB, and a quick calculation showed that even though it reported a usage of 280 MB, the sum of each application was at about 40 MB or so. Admittedly, several of the applications reported "Restarting" and 0 MB; this might be part of the problem? Additionally, I checked for cached processes, which returned "No running services", although "Maps" was there once, briefly, before disappearing.

The following apps showed up (all restarting are reported as 0.0 B):

Settings (11MB). Maps (8,3 MB or restarting), DRM content (restarting), Software Update (restarting), Task Manager (4.6 MB), Google Services (4.6 MB), SNS (restarting), Email (restarting), Samsung Keypad (11 MB) (this was just one example, obviously the numbers change).

I have the following apps installed:

Snap n Go, Evernote, Adobe Reader, mVideoPlayer, SNesoid Lite, GameBoid Lite, ACV, and something called com.agilesoftresource which I'm frankly not sure what is (it's also reported as "Saved data" rather than "Installed on device" like the others).

If you want me to uninstall them to check if things get better, I guess I could do that, but I'd rather not remove Evernote, ACV or mVideoPlayer (the two last would be OK to remove if I had some substitute, I guess). As for how recent, only mVideoPlayer, Evernote and Adobe are relatively "recent", the others being at least half a year old.

I don't know what other information might be relevant; I haven't rooted or done anything "fancy" to my mobile, and I have plenty of storage space left. I'm really lost here; I feel as though I might just have to backup the entire thing and return to factory settings, although I'm worried I'd still lose some important data; and I don't even know if this would fix it.
 
Seems strange, something is definitely chomping at the RAM though. Do you have a task killer or anything like that installed? They can be the culprit in cases like this.

You could try installing this, (or a similar app) that should give you a list of everything that's running in the background and what RAM it's eating.
 
Right, I installed the app you recommended (although only the free version, as a trial).

Firstly, I've noticed that RAM usage seems to increase every time the phone does a media scanning (as it does when switched on, or when exiting USB mode, a mode I frequently use it in), and doesn't go down afterwards. This does not seem to be the only connection, but it is one, at least.

Anyways, Twistbyte made a quite interesting report. I seem to have forgotten the button combo to take a screenshot, so I'll simply write a summary, in the form "Name" (Current Memory / Peak Memory / Priority):

"DRM Protected Content Storage/Download" (181 MB / 205 MB / 100)
"Security Storage/Android System" (50 MB / 70 MB / 100)
"TwLauncher" (30 MB / 34 MB / 400)
"Status Bar" (23 MB / 34 MB / 100)
"Memory Usage" (22 MB / 22 MB / 100)
"Samsung Keypad" (19 MB / 27 MB / 130)
"Dialer Storage/Dialer" (16 MB / 26 MB / 100)
"Google Services Framework" (15 MB / 25 MB / 130)
"Maps" (15 MB / 22 MB / 300)
"Software Update" (13 MB / 18 MB / 300)
"BrcmBluetoothServices" (12 MB / 17 MB / 100)
"DRM content" (11 MB / 15 MB / 300)

Active: 272MB, Avail: 32MB, Inactive: 14MB

So yeah, I wrote down the entire list for completion, but...over 200 MB for this DRM Protected stuff? That seems... excessive.

What do I do?
 
I'm searching through a few threads to see if I can get a bit more info on that DRM Protected Content Storage service and you don't appear to be the only one that finds it problematic. Unfortunately, I can find a thread that gives a decent solution on how to deal with it.

Do you have any DRM media on your SD Card?
 
Hm... DRM, huh? Well, I'm not sure what would have DRM, but as I mentioned I have installed the SNESoid and GameBoid-apps, which emulate SNES and GameBoy-games, and I downloaded a couple of ROMs for them (legally, I might add, as I own hardware copies of those games). I did that quite some time ago, though.

There's plenty of music on it, some comics and some movies, but again, it should all be legit.

EDIT: I DID burn a CD, although I doubt that had any DRM, and hey, even I know that's so common (and legal) that it shouldn't mess up anything...?

What else? Well, I have some very odd "1.."-files in my directory (I made a post of it here: http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s/441612-what-these-1-files-why-wont-they-go-away.html , although seemingly no-one knew anything about them). The timing of those fit somewhat better with my problems, but not so perfectly that I can pinpoint them as the cause.

Also, since I posted this it's been getting worse, the mobile now occasionally crashes while playing music; it just happens between songs, the next song just doesn't start, and when I check what's wrong the mobile has been switched off.

I'm sorry to say that I'm totally lost... but I really appreciate the help so far!

EDIT II:

http://androidforums.com/commando-all-things-root/436092-list-apps-safely-remove-2-3-3-a.html

http://androidforums.com/commando-all-things-root/408950-list-apps-safely-remove-tips.html

So after some searching, I found these two links. Now, apparently they don't apply to the Galaxy S, but they do consider Android in general, obviously. Both say that the DRM Protected Content Storage "app" can be relatively safely deleted or "frozen" (I assume this is the same as rendering it inactive. No, I really don't have any skills at tech, forgive me if I don't know the lingo).

However, seemingly you would have to "root" the phone in order to do it... seems like a lot of work. So, is it either rooting or wiping?
 
Apologies for the delay in responding!

My personal preference would be rooting, you won't lose anything by doing so (although I'm unfamiliar with root methods for the Galaxy S, but can research if you need assistance) and there's no garauntee a factory reset would solve the problem either.

Just a thought, what happens when you use the phone with no SD Card so there's no media to check?
 
No worries about the time, the fact that you're helping me at all is more than enough for me.

Hm, if rooting is the way to go, then don't worry on my account; although I have no tech skills, I'm a mathematician and so following instructions without needing to understand them is my specialty (heh), so I'll just head over to the appropriate forums and find a walk-through.

As for the SD card, I removed the external SD (but not the SIM-card), and indeed this seems to have "fixed" the problem - RAM usage doesn't seem to exceed 180 MB after killing all idle processes (is this a normal number, by the way?). DRM Protected Content Storage/Content Download stays at 23 / 38 / 100 (though Security Storage / Android System / Settings Storage is at 56 / 69 / 100, possibly quite normal?)

So the way I see it there are three possibilities:

1) My SD card is itself corrupt and messes with me (highly unlikely, although more likely if caused by a new iteration of software having issues)
2) The amount of data causes stuff to mess up (again, highly unlikely as there's plenty of free space)
3) Some file on the SD card is causing this mess (seems likely)

I'm therefore going to do a little experimenting, isolating and temporarily removing some files I have transferred away from the mobile and see how it reacts. If that fails, I will root.

I'll report back when I know more!
 
Re the killing idle processes, in normal circumstances, Android is actually pretty good at managing memory (obviously not in this instance :p) so once you've sorted your problem, there'll be no need to be killing processes yourself.

There's an app called H2Testw which will test the integrity of the SD Card if you want to give that a whirl for your first test.
 
I guess I can give my so-far progress report.

As I stated, taking out the SD card seems to have fixed the problem. Hypothesising that it was one or more files on the SD card causing the problem, I temporarily removed most (though not all) of the media on it, and lo! no ramping ram, DRM-content-thingey staying at about 25 MB.

I'm currently checking whether it is one or more specific files causing the problem, or whether my mobile just gets a heart attack if it has too much media on it. Gonna take some time, though, since I'm moving around quite a lot of GB's.

Also, question: How long does usually the "media scanning" take? On my mobile, it's usually a lengthy process, but after removing most media files it was over almost instantaneously. Of course, I assume it takes longer time the more files you have, but I was wondering if maybe some file/files makes it last longer than it should. Part of the reason why I'm interested is that I see that RAM builds quite steadily while media scanning is running, which seems odd...
 
I've never really noticed the media scan on my handset, but then I don't really put media on there. I'll occasionally convert one of my DVD's to watch on a night shift, but other than that, all that's really on the SD Card is pictures I've taken with the camera/been sent.

How is your testing going?
 
Right, I've transferred my media away from my mobile and then transferred in some 10GB of big chunky movie files I had laying about (10BG was roughly the total size of the media I had on my mobile before).

Result: Media scanning time effectively zero, and DRM-thingey didn't even make top ten on the list of what used most RAM (at about 20 MB or something).

So this pretty much confirms that there's something wrong about my media files. I've got two theories:

1) As previously stated, there's some "bad file", possibly with a (faulty) DRM protection, which is messing up my system, or
2) Not in itself the storage space taken, but the sheer number of media files is what is causing the trouble.

To explain 2), I'm somewhat of a mediaphile (is that a word?), and have what I'd estimate to something around ten thousand pages worth of comics on my mobile at any time. So far I've simply stored them as folders with individual .jpg /.png /.bmp / whatever-files, and I'm thinking that my mobile might be straining - even though each file is individually small, there's a minimum time for how short the scanning of a single file can go, regardless of file size.

I think. Like I said, I have no tech skills.

In that case, maybe a quick fix would be to compress each folder into a zip-archive? I'm fairly certain my comic reader application (ACV, Android Comic Viewer) can still read those.

I'll be reporting back.
 
I'm betting it's the sheer volume of files on there. How I understand what you've written is that each of those jpg's/pages is in it's own separate folder? Just as a test, could you put them all in one folder, would that be feasible?
 
Sorry if I was unclear; it wouldn't be effective to have each file in it's own folder, but each comic has its own folder, which may contain from 50 to roughly 1000 images, depending on which.

I'm going to zip each folder, and see if that makes any difference.

The reason why I didn't immediately think of this is that I'm still not convinced that this is it - I've used my mobile this way since the beginning, and quite frankly this is hardly the largest number of files I've had on it, so it seems odd that it should start acting up now.

It might take a bit of time, since I'm going to be very busy with exams the next two days, but I'll come back to the case once I know more.
 
Ok, so I'm back (exams went ok, by the way).

I've tweaked around a bit with my phone the last few days, and seemingly zipping all archives did make quite a bit of difference. Admittedly, media scanning is still not instantaneous (as it would be for 10 GB of movies as opposed to 10 GB of zipped images), but it's at least much faster than it used to be, and I am no longer bothered by extreme RAM ramping.

Again, I am uncertain as to why this solved the issue, as I have had many more files on the mobile before without effect; but there is the possibility that there is some issue in the latest firmware update of Android which makes it susceptible to large numbers of files.

In conclusion, the case can be regarded as closed for now. If ever the problem resurfaces, I'll be asking for help once more.

Many thanks for the help! I have really appreciated it.

With that, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Joyfully,

Christars.
 
Christars said:
In conclusion, the case can be regarded as closed for now. If ever the problem resurfaces, I'll be asking for help once more.

Many thanks for the help! I have really appreciated it.

With that, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Joyfully,

Christars.
Click to expand...

Well done on the exams! :)

Glad you got to the bottom of the issue and you've managed to sort. I'll assume the same as you, that there's some sort of issue with the latest version of android for your handset, seems weird, but nothing's perfect.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New year to you too, hope you have a good one! :D
 
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