Microsoft → [WIN7] What is using so much RAM?

Using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

A few times recently I've run out of RAM and I can't figure out why. I have 16GB of RAM which is typically plenty. I closed all the programs I was using, and according to the Performance tab of Task Manager, RAM usage dropped to 10.5 GB. For curiosity I added up the reported memory usage for all the processes for all users, and came up with 1,088 MB.

This is a relatively new problem considering the life of the computer, but doesn't happen frequently enough for me to figure out what I did to cause it. After a fresh reboot and starting all the software I work with (Thunderbird, Firefox, Notepad++, Photoshop) I use a little under 4GB.

I have not used a swap file in years, with no problems until now.

Any suggestions for troubleshooting would be welcome.

Thanks,
Mango

From the performance tab of Task Manager, click on resource monitor which has a memory tab. Maybe you'll spot the culprit there. The columns are sortable by clicking them.

Thanks! Never noticed that before.

I'll try it next time.

Or Start->Accessories->System Tools->Resource Monitor.

Right now, I am apparently using 84% of my RAM. I opened some big files in Photoshop to verify that was accurate, and Photoshop promptly crashed. So, I guess that is accurate.

Resource Monitor gave me a pointer. ~6GB of RAM is "In Use". But ~7GB is "Modified".

I Googled this and was pointed to RamMap which I have downloaded. It confirms the 7GB of RAM in Modified state, but on the Processes tab, it claims only six processes have a total of 28MB of RAM in Modified.

Have found some other reports of this problem, but no solutions that helped me. One user reported that he cleared his event viewer. This did not seem to have an effect in my case.

I closed all my programs and stopped all the services that I could. Result: nothing.

I'm thinking maybe one of my drivers has a memory leak.

Can you take and post a screenshot of the proformance tab of task manager?

I'm wondering if, perhaps due to some update, Windows doesn't play nice without a nominal swap file allocated.

One other user with this problem stated he added a swap file, but that just delayed the problem.

Here's what I see on my box from Process Explorer, view menu, System information:

One other thing. This is a system memory problem, and not a 32 bit program exceeding a 2GB or 4GB memory limit. I had to hack a 32 bit program for large memory support, but even then, 4GB is it for any individual 32 bit program, so I'm led to believe.

I'm willing to bet it was a windows update. I have the same OS as you do, and never had an issue with ram. On a fresh start and after all settles down from starting up and not opening any programs, I used to always be around 21% ram in use just sitting there. Around Nov.-Dec. of last year all hell broke loose after a very large update. And I think it was something like 138 or 158 updates!!
It was like I had never updated before and I got them all at once.
In other words, a heck of a lot of updates.

Ever since then (it seems) I have noticed my ram usage is sometimes double what it normally used to be.

Just recently (about a week or two ago) I had more updates, and it seems the ram usage went down some when idle and now usually sits around 28% in use instead of 21% in use when I first got this machine.

I have also noticed after that large update, my HD activity light seems to be doing a lot more in the back round when idle, compared to what I was used to seeing for several years when idle.

Firstly, "not in physical memory" does not mean "in the page file". It means either "nowhere" (for pages with no content that haven't been touched yet) or "in the image file" (for pure code and data).

An example of the latter: if you run a 1000 page (=4MB more or less) program, then when we execute the first instruction, we'll have 1000 pages of commit charge, with 1 page of used physical memory. The other 999 pages are still in the .exe file because there's been no need to do otherwise yet. And if you never run certain parts of the program there will never be a need to bring them into memory. There's certainly no need to write those pages that never change into the page file.

(Above is seriously inaccurate but illustrates the general concept)

Secondly, there's no point in keeping things in memory that don't need to be in memory. That's the part that OS designers understand Since it's difficult to see into the future and know whether you're going to need a 'recently unused' page in the next few milliseconds, one technique is to write out a copy of a modified page -and- keep a copy in physical memory. Then if you suddenly need to reclaim the physical memory, you can do it instantly.

If you refer to Frodo's screen shot, there's about 4GB on the standby list. That's memory that is immediately available but with meaningful content.

Virtual memory systems are a black art.

I came across a great little tool for finding what ram is being used for.

»technet.microsoft.com/en ··· 229.aspx

I also have 16gb of ram and was finding that 85% of that was being used with only a few small applications running.. and task manager wasn't telling me how/where it was being used.

Microsoft's Ram map was able to free it up, however I have yet to figure out the cause, though I suspect it's PLEX media server accessing 100,000files over the network and windows trying to cache them.

 
Sonofagun, yet another feature I did not notice. I will give that a shot next time.

I do use a network drive extensively.

That might be the cause. Windows is designed to award automatically to any program a certain amount of RAM (whatever it requests), AND a certain amount of virtual address space. The latter is NOT RAM and NOT "extra memory", but it is needed for many programs to operate correctly. By default, Windows awards the virtual address space to the page file. More often then not, it just sits there barely being used/touched except taking on disk space. When it IS needed, a program can write some of it's RAM held information to this virtual address space, thus freeing up RAM for other applications.

Now mind you, this "virtual address space" is not RAM or memory, it is simply a block of hexadecimal address space a program can use to write stuff off to if needed.

The problem comes in when you have NO page file. Windows has no alternative to put both the RAM, AND the virtual address space into it's available physical memory, resulting in a computer using a lot more RAM then it actually needs to use as stuff that can safely be written to virtual memory, actually ALSO gets written to RAM.

It's been tested, you can read articles about it all over the web, and there is not only NO provable performance increase by disabling the page file, it can lead to crashing applications (some expect a page file to be present) or in the event you have a run-away-process that really cuts the cake and starts leaking memory and eating it, viable processes that require memory then can't write it off somewhere and keep the system stable, and end up crashing.

Here are some good articles about it:

»www.howtogeek.com/126430 ··· able-it/

»www.howtogeek.com/196238 ··· tion-be/

Bottom line: You should never disable the page file, even if you have 256 GB of RAM. It doesn't improve performance AT ALL, but it can lead to problems.

I use an SSD, so disabled the page file to reduce writes to it. I'm not sure if it improved performance or not.

Since this symptom is the only one, I'll leave the page file disabled as I can live with a monthly reboot.

Unless you have an older SSD, just turn the page file back on default and be done with it.

I have a 512GB 840 pro and I abuse my SSD, page file on, huge files transfers to it esp. games and games updates, constant OS reloads, changes and upgrades with the Windows 10 TP. and in 123 days, I have only written 3.26TB (About 26GB a day), at this rate it will take a total of 2,754 days (7.5 Years) to hit Samsung's Enterprise usages warranty limit, but the Warranty is only 5 years anyways.

»techreport.com/review/25 ··· b-update

Have you set up over provisioning on the SSD?
»www.kingston.com/en/ssd/ ··· isioning