What does NTSTATUS 0xC00001AD (STATUS_FATAL_MEMORY_EXHAUSTION) mean?

STATUS_FATAL_MEMORY_EXHAUSTION

The process reached a fatal allocation boundary

STATUS_FATAL_MEMORY_EXHAUSTION means the process could not obtain additional memory and terminated rather than continue in an unsafe state. It is more specific than generic advice about conserving RAM: the useful evidence is the allocation pressure and address-space state of the process at termination.

Evidence to capture

• Record process commit, private bytes, virtual address-space layout, system commit limit, page-file state, and the size of the failing allocation when available.
• Look for sustained growth, fragmentation in a constrained address space, a runaway cache or queue, or unusually large single allocations.
• On a 32-bit process, distinguish address-space exhaustion from machine-wide physical-memory pressure.

Recovery boundary

A restart can restore capacity temporarily but does not explain repeated exhaustion. Fix the leak, unbounded retention, allocation size, or deployment capacity that reproduces the termination.

References

• Microsoft Open Specifications: NTSTATUS values
• Microsoft: Using NTSTATUS values