What resource am I lacking? Causes notepad to be missing menu, or programs to not open

Question

At this point when a notepad window is like that with no menu, I can't open another notepad either.

After closing one or a few cmd prompts. Or after closing an add/remove programs window, or a notepad++ window that had a dialog box in it. Or an mspaint window.. In this situation, I can close windows that are current/on screen until it then allows me to open something new. Then I can open a new notepad and it'll have a menu in it.

After closing a few, i've now it lets me open them, i've taken a screenshot from task manager.

I see based on those 2 images, that

I still have over 250MB RAM left.. when I have the problem, (more than enough for a notepad) So perhaps not a RAM issue?

And I don't see any substantial difference before/after the problem, with my memory shown by task manager in that screen.

So i'm wondering if maybe there is other memory somewhere that is getting used up that task manager is not showing.

ADDED Saw a similar issue on a laptop from a few years ago I also got this error on a laptop when CDing to a network drive at the cmd prompt. Prior to that I was running an application that had a lot of GUI objects in it and it wasn't all showing properly/

"Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service"

Answer 1

It's likely video memory. As that is limited.

Based on this link on tomshardware forum, here, Windows 9X used to have "system resources" and hence it had its resource meter utility. Windows XP was a big improvement over 9X and did away or just didn't have, that limitation and so has no "system resource meter". Another post mentions something not relevant regarding the video card.

It makes sense though for the issue to be Video Card related, specifically, to the memory on the video card, or memory in the integrated video.

Video memory would be a particularly limited resource. Particularly on a laptop or with an old low end video card, and that does explain what i've seen.

One can view total video card memory, (not sure about viewing video memory consumed).

In XP you can view video memory, from

control panel..display.. (/right click xp desktop..properties brings up same thing) then settings tab..advanced..adapter.. and it says "Memory Size: ..."

In Windows 7 you can see there. (control panel..display.....) and get that screen you see in xp. Or use start..dxdiag

One P4 2.8GHz 2GB RAM machine had integrated video, and video memory of 32MB!! (an example screenshot of the screen that shows how total video memory)

An old laptop, had 1.5GHz RAM, and video memory of 128MB!!

A new laptop, Core i5, upgradeable to 16GB RAM, has about 1600MB video card memory !

Programs that use more GUI objects, cause more of an issue.. So it makes sense. I don't think i've seen it on the laptop with 1600MB video memory.. though I did have some kind of issue once loading programs.. so it may have been that 'cos I doubt it was the 12GB RAM. But either way, the fact that the other computers I mention, had video memory of 128MB or 32MB, even though they had more than enough RAM. Shows that it looks like video memory that was the issue. It'd be good to be able to see how much video memory is consumed, and to be able to flush video memory.