When logging in to my file server with Remote Desktop, I occasionally get a message saying, "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service" and it fails to load my profile. I started getting this message a few months ago, at the same time that other weird and intermittent problems started occurring, like the occasional inability to open or download larger files from the server. Sometimes Remote Desktop can't connect at all, and I have to locally log into the server's console.
I've seen this message intermittently on several desktops; last year half a dozen desktops in different departments with little in common (besides the hardware and the antivirus software) all started getting this message along with general instability and graphical glitches; it went away on its own after a couple of months. Every computer that had this problem, including the file server when it first started, seemed to have lots of handles open according to Task Manager (>100k instead of the usual 20-30k). Most, though not all, were running some ancient software with lots of bugs. But now it's happening on a server that is using almost no resources: Both hard drives are less than half full; the commit charge is less than 1.5 GB on a system with 4GB RAM; the processors are <5%; the number of open handles is <20k.
What other resources are there that might be depleted? How might I find out, since the system doesn't seem inclined to tell me? Or is this a generic catch-all message meaning "I don't know what the $%^& is wrong"?
I do get an occasional event log message, a couple of times a week, saying, "The server was unable to allocate from the system paged pool because the pool was empty." It doesn't seem to correlate at all with the other symptoms, though. I have no idea what causes it, or what the system is trying to do at the moments this message appears. When I google this message, I only find vague suggestions to make sure all my software and service packs are up to date. It is. This may be related or may be a red herring, but I'm not sure how to investigate it further since windows gives no details.
Best Answer
We've been having similar problems with our 2003 terminal server.
We receive lots of applications complaining with error message "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service". And also receive events complaining about the paged pool memory.
It's been difficult however because many times the event log itself gets corrupted.
We've followed the steps at:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312362
The suggestions there have given us mixed results. The problem is less frequent, but not eliminated.