Whew! This is getting a little nutty. I now know more about Windows memory and how it plays with Oracle than I ever really thought I would need to know in order to be a happy person.
A few more questions: Would the size of the data set being operated on have any bearing on the memory usage? This problem is happening in a data warehouse that grows each month. And it has been happening more frequently each month. I think the queries themselves stay the same, but more data may be being returned as time goes on.
I saw on Metalink Note:271072.1 that the init.ora processes has no impact on this situation because it doesn't take in any resources. Agreed?
If my best immediate solution is to reduce the size of the SGA and I have these values set (I inherited this db so can't address why values where changed):
