Hello, I have been battling a problem in a client's environment and hope someone can help. Sometimes, when I exectute a tasklist command in the command line window - i get the following error "Error - Out of Memorey"; But when I go to the Task Manager - I see that only 29% of the memory is used! This happens on the Windows 2008 R2 server that has SQL Server 2008 R2 running and pretty much nothing else. This is a database server with 16G of RAM with SQL server consuming only about 2G. Is this a setting on a server that needs to be made? Or is this a bug in tasklist? Would greatly appreciate any suggestions as my application depends on the tasklist command executing every so often. Thank you

I dont think its a bug. Restart your server in the safe mode and do scan and let us know, if possible please restart and also checkhttp://www.virmansec.com/blogs/skhairuddin

Syed, Thank you for the reply. These server has been restarted and scanned multiple times. Any other suggestions? Thank you!

Hi foxesout, Thank you for your post. Generally, tasklist command could be run without error on Windows 2008 R2. If you could run tasklist in safe mode, please reboot your server via clean boot to troubleshooting. You could also use Process Explorer tool to find which process is abnormal. If there are more inquiries on this issue, please feel free to let us know. Regards, Rick Tan

Hi Rick, Could you elaborate a bit? I can ask the client to start the box in safe mode then run the tasklist. What should I expect? Most likely it will run without a problem. Do you think the command may give me an error? I can also use the Process Explorer, but again what am I looking for? How is abnormal process designated? Please note - i'm getting the error even when the memory is at 29%. I'm just not sure from your suggestions what am I looking for. I would appreciate any advise. Thank you

Hi foxesout, Oh, sorry to express not clearly. I just want to you to test if tasklist works in safe mode. If it works, it means some suspicious process/malware prevent tasklist running in Windows normal mode. The process protect itself from tasklist & taskkill command. You could use Process Explorer tool to contrast session list in these two modes. Abnormal process is what not be signatured by MS or not be recognize by you. If there are more inquiries on this issue, please feel free to let us know.Regards, Rick Tan