Strange message - help please

I receive this message every few days:

“!The instruction at 0x00007FFD215DDBE0 referenced memory at
0x0000000000000000. The memory could not be read.
Click on OK to terminate the program”

(Spider Solitaire running
Microsoft Edge running)

and I have no idea what it means. I click ‘OK’ as it says, but neither of the running programmes closes, so it must be referring to something else that I am unaware of.
There seems to be no other problem arising as a consequence.
Does anyone have any idea what it is referring to and why it keeps appearing?

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It may literally mean there is a solitary spider running round inside your computer messing things up. :spider:

:thinking:

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As I was not there to see what causes the message, I’d hazard a guess that your memory was insufficient to execute the task at that time. The trouble with ‘standard’ as-sold computers is usually the memory, so I uprate mine to 16Gb minimum.

I wouldn’t worry about it. I have no idea why Microsoft does not make there error message a little more understandable.
I would suggest if you keep getting the message, shut the program down, uninstall it, restart your PC and reinstall the program.

Thanks. Actually, this laptop has 16Gb RAM which I should have thought would be more than adequate for what I use.
As I noted at the time, the only programmes running at that time were MS Edge and Spider Solitaire. There will also be some things running in the background, but there seems to be plenty of free memory when I look in 'Computer Management / System Tools / Performance.
Strange.

Looks like you picked out the most 'orrible failure known to man!

There is some help here:-

Fix “Instruction at Referenced Memory Could Not Be Read” Errors (helpdeskgeek.com)

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Thanks. That looks very helpful.
It doesn’t happen every day and I can see no obvious cause, so it might be best to resort to:
Option 1 - Ignore it!
Or perhaps I could think about creating more virtual memory, but I’ll have to read on and think about whether that’s worth the effort. So far, I just click ‘OK’ and the message goes on its merry way.
A very interesting article, which I’ll read more thoroughly when I have more time. Thanks.

It is more than enough, as I said these error messages are far to ambiguous for mere mortals ignore it.

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I have an American amateur radio friend who is an IT specialist at Ford. His team comes from all over the US. So once a year Ford pays for a team building week, so they get to see each other in the real world.

One year they spent a day, hot air ballooning in Washington state & who ever was navigating misplaced them on the map. Dropping low they shouted to someone below. “Where are we?” In a basket below a balloon came the answer & instantly the pilot knew exactly where they were.

That was amazing, my friend said, how did that help you? Easy, the pilot said. I have a PC & that could only be Microsoft’s HQ, as who, but Microsoft, could tell you something so factually correct, but so utterly useless from a practical point of view?

@JBR Your PC has told you it had an issue with memory. Maybe the tide was in, or maybe the tea leaves looked bad today. Or maybe it was just something completely irrelevant. However, unless it keeps happening with different programs running. The chances are, it was simply a glitch & nothing to worry about. But the chances are your PC just ran out of memory to do what it wanted to do, due to a heavy memory process going on at that time.

So it could have been a program you were running at the time. Or it could have been a background program running at that time. Lots of programs run in the background. But basically it was nothing to worry about.

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Thanks again Ted. I’ve had a good look through those instructions and found the most likely culprit is Edge, which is using far and away more memory than anything else, perhaps everything else combined, so I strongly suspect that is the culprit especially since I routinely have it running with 11 tabs running.
I haven’t made any of the changes, though I thought about adding some virtual memory, but one step at a time.
If this message comes along again, I’ll omit some of the tabs in Edge which I don’t use as much. I can always open them up individually if and when I need one of them.

Thanks for your reassurances, Gee. I have stopped worrying! :rofl:

The time to start worrying is when you receive the message:

Flee! All is known…

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Have you looked at your Task Manager? (right click the taskbar).

As soon as I got home with my new laptop sporting Windows 10 JB, edge was the first casualty in a long list of useless programmes to be deleted. Cortana was the next.

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Yes, I looked at that yesterday when following the instructions on the site provided by Ted.
Microsoft Edge always comes at the top when I click the ‘memory’ column. In fact it appears more than once in the list which makes me suspect that it is causing memory problems, but thankfully only occasionally.
Malwarebytes is also memory hungry.

But what do you use in place of Edge?
I’ve tried Chrome and Firefox, but found they both had their drawbacks. I don’t know whether they demand as much memory though.
I’d certainly get rid of Cortana if I could, but M$ won’t let me!

I only use Windows defender, I did have others but found that their pop ups annoying, some were memory hogs for no apparent reason, I would uninstall it.
I don’t use Edge I prefer Chrome but that also has its issues.
You also might want to download and run this tool as I suspect Microsoft are sneaky enough to dump their bloatware on you after a refresh.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Yes, I use Defender and am happy to update that whenever it tells me an update is available.
I might start allowing Windows Updates again - until they begin taking over and taking too long, which is what put me off some time ago.
I used to use Chrome until they changed the way they handled their ‘favourites’ service.
I’ll have a look at OO-software in a bit. Is it a direct replacement for Malwarebytes, as that keeps nagging me to pay for a paid-for version!

Last question first. OO is not an anti malware program it is useful for getting rid of all the programs Windows bundles with its operating system which it may or may not have reinstalled with your refresh.
Do you mean bookmarks when you say ‘favourites’?
If so what is it that you do not like I used to use Internet Explorer but changed to Chrome and imported all my bookmarks which now show as ‘imported’ underneath the search bar to the left so easily accessible and add to.
I don’t seem to have issues with updates as they tend to download in the background then inform me that I need to restart for them to be installed, are you using Windows 10 or 11?
Personally I would uninstall Malwarebytes and just use Defender, no more nagging to go pro.:smiley::smiley:

First question first!

OO might be useful. I hadn’t realised it’s not an anti-malware programme. Is it safe to get rid of everything that Windows includes with its OS? How does it know which ones are really not wanted?

Yes, ‘favourites’ are what Edge calls ‘bookmarks’ - exactly the same.

I can’t remember exactly what Chrome did now, but I do remember that saving bookmarks/favourites needed a couple of extra things for me to do to get them to go where I wanted. Apart from that, Chrome was OK and I might go back to it if Edge changes in some way.

Yes, I prevented Windows doing updates by stating my working hours were from 0800 to 0200 and that my internet was on a metered network (which it isn’t). As long as I don’t find any installation taking place without my agreement and interrupting my use of my computer, that’s probably OK.

Oh, I can live with Malwarebytes, I only get the occasional nag and it does find several ‘pups’ whenever I run it. Does Windows Defender do that?