Windows 7 Vista Ultimate Memory Usage

[lorenkjr1]

Why does Vista Ultimate take up so much memory? Looking at my situation it does.

Vista Ultimate fully loaded with all my good stuff in memory.

Roboform
Sticker
Speedfan
Logitech Keyboard
Dap
Avast
Impulse
Onenote
Yamicsoft Free memory
and of course themes by Stardock

Same stuff loaded with Windows 7.

Difference is Vista around 2200 megs memory

Windows 7 around 2800 to 2900 meg's free
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I have disabled quite a few things but, since I run a Windows Mac network it's not going to be possible to disable everything that I can think of. But, the difference is quite a bit in my mind, and I would think there should be a way to close the gap somewhat.

 

[Celestra]

I know you use a Mac O/S, What is your Web Browser ? I know that everybody just loves to use Firefox for their 64 bit. But I read that "Firefox" uses up to 50 % of your RAM.

I ran across this optimizer: Link Removed due to 404 Error (Not sure if MAC uses that much with "Firefox")

 

[lorenkjr1]

Thanks, yes I do. I am also wondering about cache if it is maybe set to high?

 

[village idiot]

Vista in general with all the default OS processes going can consume ram, it's why to get any decent performance out of the OS 2gb is the way for 32bit versions.

 

[lorenkjr1]

Agreed though I suspect I did not mention this one is on 4 gbs. My problem is end result is it is continually eating up ram when most of what I am doing is just browsing.

 

[village idiot]

Agreed though I suspect I did not mention this one is on 4 gbs. My problem is end result is it is continually eating up ram when most of what I am doing is just browsing.

So there's nothing else going, by that I mean other programs.? Most browsers are bit memory intensive in terms of the amount of tabs you might have, but in no way should impact on 4gbs, every thing should be hunky dory Which make me think some thing else might be at play, some other processors that might load at start up, with out you knowing.

I dont know your level of confidence when comes to computers, but try START, then RUN, then type MSCONFIG, then see what's loading at start up, a lot of crap when you install stuff thinks it's a good idea by default to load things at start up, which bogs the system down and hogs ram.

 

[kemical]

Lorenkjr are you having a particular problem with your RAM or are you just alarmed at what seems excessive usage?

Remember that vista will put all you main utilitys processes ect into the RAM for instant access. This is done by a process called 'Superfetch' and is actually quite amazing. Rather than me garble on, read this informative link on Superfetch:

SuperFetch: How it Works & Myths

 

[Celestra]

You might try turning Vista's Aero Glass Transparency off, it uses a lot of RAM. Here see these performance tips: Speed Up the Performance of Vista - Vista Forums

 

[lorenkjr1]

Well it's really just that it was using way too much ram for what I now find thanks to the suggestion of finding out what was really running. So I culled out what I felt were the needless things it was running am now back around 2.75 gig's of ram, and still have a fairly good amount of stuff running. I got to notice this when running IE8 and the ram would start out at lets say 2.5+ gig's and after running for a while it dropped down to below 2 gig's. or more. I do not mind using ram but, I don't like to waste it needlessly, right? Go's back to the story of you can never have too much ram.

 

[kemical]

Well it's really just that it was using way too much ram for what I now find thanks to the suggestion of finding out what was really running. So I culled out what I felt were the needless things it was running am now back around 2.75 gig's of ram, and still have a fairly good amount of stuff running. I got to notice this when running IE8 and the ram would start out at lets say 2.5+ gig's and after running for a while it dropped down to below 2 gig's. or more. I do not mind using ram but, I don't like to waste it needlessly, right? Go's back to the story of you can never have too much ram.

Did you read the stuff I linked? If so you'll then understand why it looks like lots of RAM is being used....

 

[lorenkjr1]

Yeah I finally just now did. It is quite amazing indeed. But, also I was running a lot a lot of stuff that I really did not need to for one reason or another. Such as webcam software, clipboard, hard drive temp, among others. After culling stuff out I am much more comfortable than I was before. There is always such a thing as too much and I was exceding that I believe.

 

[kemical]

I didn't realise that Superfetch did as much as it did and it kinda puts paid to the saying 'I'm using too much RAM' as thats whats it's designed to do. (use your RAM that is)

 

[lorenkjr1]

I dug up some stuff yet. Bonjour for Itunes (sharing songs which I do not do), using Iolo's System Mechcanic which takes a good junk of ram to watch over your system all the time, and I probably can do better with a single non resident program, I was also using Unix on the Vista side which I rarely use except for the text editor again which though I might miss I don't really need it. Oh yeah and what is that Powershell I believe, which I tried once and did not really care for it that much. Gee, it's amazing what you can find that one is running that you do not really need to be running. I am probably going to dump Quicktime also provided, that Itunes will run without it. Now that one might be a challenge.

 

[cybercore]

Link Removed

Why does Vista Ultimate take up so much memory? Looking at my situation it does.

Vista Ultimate fully loaded with all my good stuff in memory.

Roboform
Sticker
Speedfan
Logitech Keyboard
Dap
Avast
Impulse
Onenote
Yamicsoft Free memory
and of course themes by Stardock

Same stuff loaded with Windows 7.

Difference is Vista around 2200 megs memory

Windows 7 around 2800 to 2900 meg's free
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have disabled quite a few things but, since I run a Windows Mac network it's not going to be possible to disable everything that I can think of. But, the difference is quite a bit in my mind, and I would think there should be a way to close the gap somewhat.

It used to keep me worried much too. Superfetch caches certain data for the OS and the installed programs to make their loading and operation faster. The more software is installed, the more time it takes to cache on system's start. Vista's superfetch works so that it uses all ram available. This is not to worry because as an application requires free memory a part of ram gets released of some cached data.

For me the most inconvenient with the Vista's superfetch was my hard drive beint busy for a while when I logged to my account. The best solution for me was having the superfetch service permanently disabled and enabling it manually when I needed it (as in a case of frequent opening and closing of applications):

Control Panel > Classic View > Administrative > Services > Superfetch Properties


Other options are :

1 Enable SuperFetch for boot files only;

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
“EnablePrefetcher”=dword:00000003
“EnableSuperfetch”=dword:00000001

2 Enable SuperFetch for programs only;

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
“EnablePrefetcher”=dword:00000003
“EnableSuperfetch”=dword:00000002

3 Enable SuperFetch for both boot files and programs

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
“EnablePrefetcher”=dword:00000003
“EnableSuperfetch”=dword:00000003

Copy to notepad, save as .reg. But I DO recommend this :

For me the most inconvenient with the Vista's superfetch was my hard drive beint busy for a while when I logged to my account. The best solution for me was having the superfetch service permanently disabled and enabling it manually when I needed it (as in a case of frequent opening and closing of applications):

Control Panel > Classic View > Administrative > Services > Superfetch Properties