# Why is my PC using so much RAM?



## -zorph-

I have 8190mb of RAM installed, yet it always has a ton being used.

Check out this screenshot of my Task Manager Performance page, what gives?

http://i.imgur.com/rBuUx.jpg


Thanks in advance!


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## -zorph-

Anybody?


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## MPR

Click the Processes tab and you will be able to see what is running on your system and which are using the most memory.


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## John DiSandro

That is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing. I bought 4 Gbytes of shiny new RAM, and the stupid machine wouldn't use more than 300 Mbytes of it. Ran just as slow as when I had 512 Mbytes of the cheap stuff.


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## -zorph-

MPR said:


> Click the Processes tab and you will be able to see what is running on your system and which are using the most memory.


I don't think you're quite understanding. At the time of that screenshot, I only had Firefox open with 1 TAB.

And I still am having like 3.5gb of RAM used. It never goes under that.


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## Niram

The request is still the same, open the processes tab and post a screenshot

the system itself doesn't need more than 800MB to run so there must be something using the ram


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## John DiSandro

-zorph- said:


> I don't think you're quite understanding.


Launch Task Manager and post a screenshot showing memory usage.


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## Wrench97

Open Resource Monitor(Start type resmon.exe in the search box and hit enter) click on the Memory tab and give us a screen shot of the graph.


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## -zorph-

wrench97 said:


> Open Resource Monitor(Start type resmon.exe in the search box and hit enter) click on the Memory tab and give us a screen shot of the graph.


I'm on Vista so I only have perfmon.exe (Vista's version of resmon), and it doesn't really offer what you're looking for, but...

http://i.imgur.com/OnXMK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/J3pSN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tlHlj.jpg

This is all with just firefox and task manager open.


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## MPR

I notice that the up time for your system is quite long and the number of memory "handles" rather high. You may have run a program that failed to release memory when it closed. What happens when you reboot?


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## John DiSandro

-zorph- said:


> I'm on Vista so I only have perfmon.exe (Vista's version of resmon), and it doesn't really offer what you're looking for, but...
> 
> This is all with just firefox and task manager open.


You have BitTorrent running also. Check out "btdna.exe"

That's a lot of memory for Firefox even. Are you running a ton of add-ons etc...? Is there some kind of BitTorrent-Firefox add-on?


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## Wrench97

Vista like Win7 has "In Use" "Standby" and "Free" memory classifications the difference being Win7 does a better job of viewing the difference, I believe what you are seeing is the Standby or pre-fetch memory it's not actually in use Vista pre-fetches recently used programs into unused ram to enable faster start up of the program, if the ram is needed for another program it will be released for use.


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## LMiller7

First a few words about memory usage in general.
The amount of memory used by system and application processes is not a fixed quantity. It is highly dynamic and varies according to current system activity, what it was earlier in the session, how much memory you have, and more. The more memory you have, the more that will be used. If an application needs more memory the system will reassign memory usage as necessary.

But considering system activity your usage does seem high. Of particular concern is the high number of handles and the fact that it is higher than in the earlier screenshot. This could indicate a handle leak which could be caused by a bad driver, a buggy application, or malware. It would be useful if you could show a screenshot of Task Manager - Process tab, showing process handles.

What happens after a reboot?

Note: Memory used by Superfetch is on the standby list and will not show as in use by Task Manager.


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## -zorph-

LMiller7 said:


> First a few words about memory usage in general.
> The amount of memory used by system and application processes is not a fixed quantity. It is highly dynamic and varies according to current system activity, what it was earlier in the session, how much memory you have, and more. The more memory you have, the more that will be used. If an application needs more memory the system will reassign memory usage as necessary.
> 
> But considering system activity your usage does seem high. Of particular concern is the high number of handles and the fact that it is higher than in the earlier screenshot. This could indicate a handle leak which could be caused by a bad driver, a buggy application, or malware. It would be useful if you could show a screenshot of Task Manager - Process tab, showing process handles.
> 
> What happens after a reboot?
> 
> Note: Memory used by Superfetch is on the standby list and will not show as in use by Task Manager.


Excuse my lack of knowledge in this area, what exactly are you requesting for a screenshot? And I didn't realize BitTorrent was up, I closed the process. On a side note, I only have a couple firefox addons and they're small.


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## LMiller7

A screenshot of Task Manager - Processes tab, showing handle usage per process. This column is not shown by default but can be added from the View menu - Select Columns.

Have you tried rebooting?


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## -zorph-

LMiller7 said:


> A screenshot of Task Manager - Processes tab, showing handle usage per process. This column is not shown by default but can be added from the View menu - Select Columns.
> 
> Have you tried rebooting?


http://i.imgur.com/Zr1bC.jpg


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## Wrench97

Put a check mark in the box at bottom Show Processes from All Users, and give us another screen shot.


You still have not told us if you have rebooted?


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## -zorph-

wrench97 said:


> Put a check mark in the box at bottom Show Processes from All Users, and give us another screen shot.
> 
> 
> You still have not told us if you have rebooted?


http://i.imgur.com/Hqmid.jpg

Yes I have rebooted, multiple times.


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## -zorph-

Anyone?


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## MPR

After some research, I think that you are just seeing how Vista reports memory that it uses as part of the superfetch and prefetch memory operations. From what I read Vista will use about half of the available memory at idle and cache the rest no matter what amount of memory is installed. If new applications need some of this memory Vista will release it to them. Superfetch and prefetch in Win 7 don't use such a blunt approach.


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