the /3G will get you to 3G you can also reduce the amount of memory each process uses by using orastack command Check the Virtual bytes you are using. Some apps like Business Objects will release the connection from the client but the process stays running in Oracle. Some developer/dba tools when they crash leave session in Oracle What for old inactive and active connections Check out MOS note 427993.1 for more details on all of the above. K --- On Wed, 3/10/10, Blessing Kamutande <kamutandeb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: Blessing Kamutande <kamutandeb@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: Help Interpreting Windows Trace To: niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx Cc: adar666@xxxxxxxxxxxx, "Oracle-L Freelists" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 8:02 AM Thank you Niall, When you say 800mb is used by user processes are you referring to Oracle processes or generally the whole system? Also that 2047M is it for this one instance or all instances on the server? For instance, say I have two instances, do the two instances share the 2074M or each instance can grow it's memory usage to 2047M? Thank you so much for the explanation. Kind Regards Blessing 2010/3/10 Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx> It is indeed the virtual address space for user processes. (and only 1.2gb of it is left). You should see this change if you reduce the kernel allocation to 1gb by use of the /3gb switch in boot.ini (or userva in the new boot configuration for windows7/Server2008). I'm prtetty certian that this information is returned by the o/s so I don't believe we can conclude that the instance memory allocation is 800mb, just that 800mb of user processes are running. Niall On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Yechiel Adar <adar666@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I beg to differ. You have 2GB for oracle. The instance use about 0.8 GB now and can grow to 2 GB. The other 2 GB (from 4GB max in 32 bit) are used for the kernel. Adar Yechiel Rechovot, Israel Dion Cho wrote: I believe that VA stands for virtual address. You are on the 32bit machine where the maximum address space is 2G. Some part of the address is reserved for the kernel thus you have around 1.2G remained. Sent from my amazing iPhone. 2010. 3. 10. 오후 7:15 Blessing Kamutande <kamutandeb@xxxxxxxxx> 작성: Hi All, I am runing Oracle Enterprose Edition 10.2.0.4 on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition 32 bit. Please help me understand the below line Correctly. Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options Windows Server 2003 Version V5.2 Service Pack 2 CPU : 16 - type 586, 2 Physical Cores Process Affinity : 0x00000000 Memory (Avail/Total): Ph:31553M/32757M, Ph+PgF:31791M/34442M, VA:1231M/2047M I assume Ph:31553M/32757M refers to the Physical Memory, Ph+PgF:31791M/34442M refers to physical + Swap space, third column is the one I'm grappling with! VA:1231M/2047M what does it refer too? which available & total memory? And what does VA stand for? Thank you in advance for the clarification. Kind Regards Blessing -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.orawin.info