Windows 7 High ram usage problem.

[mason3d]

Hey everyone,

I previously had 4GB of Ram installed on my laptop running Windows 7 64-bit. When my system was idle, ram usage would be sitting at 70% so I decided to upgrade it to 8GB of ram. Now my ram usage sits at 60% - 65% when idle with 8GB of ram. I don't understand how this is even possible and I was wondering if anyone knew of an easy way to fix this. I'm assuming something is wrong because having 65% of 8GB being used when the computer is idle is ridiculous to me.

Thanks.

 

[OldTimer]

How are you arriving at those numbers? Where do you see them?
What app is using all that ram?

Just curious!

OT

 

[Joe S]

Do you have any automatic backup software running? They can be a real resource hog. What AV are you running some security software can be hogs too. Check out Black Viper Link Removed you may have unneeded things running at startup.
Joe

 

[mason3d]

I'm seeing these numbers in the task manager. I wish I knew what was using all the ram but I really don't. There are a lot of svchost.exe's running and they seem to be taking up a good amount of ram but definitely not enough to use 65% of 8GB.

 

[mason3d]

I did have automatic backup software running but i diasbled it and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I'm also using AVG for my anti-virus.

 

[Saltgrass]

If you are looking at the free memory versus the installed, it will be around 60%. If you are looking a the Physical Memory number on the bottom, it might be better explained going to the Resource Monitor and looking at the Memory tab.

If you want to post a snipping tool picture of the graph, we might be able to see something. If it shows up in the hardware reserved, it might be for video memory or shared memory. On my system right now I am showing 95 MB for Hardware reserved, 1900 MB in use, 3100 MB Standby and 3066 Free.

 

[Joe S]

The WD Smartware that comes with their external drives can be a real pain. Even when you think it's shut down some of it's services still run and gobble up memory. I made one backup with it and uninstalled it because of high ram usage and the fact it was quirky and only backed up select file types. I've got 8 G ram. In resource monitor it shows 1 Mb hardware reserved, 1518 mb in use, 112 mb modified, 1345 mb stand by, 5214 mb free. Check your startup apps and services and disable the things you don't need running. To much software selects run at startup as the default. For example you don't need things like Photo Shop running at startup.
Joe

 

[mason3d]

Ok here's a picture of the resource monitor graph. As you can see, 5GB of ram are "In Use" when I'm not doing anything. Link Removed

 

[Joe S]

Download something like Belarc Advisor Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit and list your system specs from that. If you have an integrated graphic card that will use more ram than a separate card. Go to Run box and type MSCONFIG and list the items checked in the startup tab. I suspect you may have a lot of unnecessary stuff loading at startup.
Joe

 

[Saltgrass]

If you scroll down the window, you don't see anything taking a lot of memory. Looks like you are missing around 3 GB, so if it is listed, it should show up. I only show 5 services running more than 100,000 K and my highest is around 178,000 K.

I don't think a bad dimm would give readings like yours, it would seem the installed memory would be less if that were the case. But you might try taking out the old and just use the new. Possibly a bad socket or some such problem is related, but I don't really know how that would work.

Have you made any changes to the page file settings?

 

[mason3d]

I went into MSCONFIG and sure enough I had a ton of programs in the startup tab. I disabled about half of them and my used physical memory has dropped down to about 25%. This has seemed to solve it. Thanks a lot for your help. I really appreciate it. Link Removed