Missing memory

I have 4GB. 1GB is allocated for the Virtual Machine. So, there still is a missing 1GB or so.

sheldonlg said:

I have 4GB. 1GB is allocated for the Virtual Machine. So, there still is a missing 1GB or so.

And, as I stated earlier, the OS can take ~1-1.4GB, which you're still not accounting for. So, again, it all adds up just fine. 700 MB + 1 GB VM + 1.3GB for OS = 3GB used with 1GB remaining. For all intents and purposes, that is what your numbers are showing. Nothing is wrong.

Here is an updated resource monitor after it has been running for a while. I sorted the list by working memory in descenting order. Adding all those totals gives about 800MB, not the 2.8GB that the "In Use" says. Even discounting the 1GB that is for Virtual PC (which only shows 32MB), that would leave 1.8GB. So, where is that last 1GB?

Oh, are you saying the the OS of 1GB doesn't show in any of the processes, and that is what the missing 1GB is?

It's a little tough to explain and show what the OS does behind the scenes. You just have to understand that process list doesn't show all memory allocated in the system. There's a disconnect between the process list of what memory is being used and what is actually being allocated across the entire system for use

This link does a very good job of explaining some of this:

Investigate memory usage with Windows 7 Resource Monitor | Microsoft Windows | TechRepublic.com

This is the real take-home point of the article:

"The question of Free memory

Now that you have a good idea of how the memory manager in Windows 7 works on a global level, let’s take a few minutes to discuss a common misconception with Windows 7’s memory management scheme. As you can see in Figure C, Free memory is the second smallest list in the graph. The misconception is to look at that small value and think that Windows 7 is a memory hog and that a system cannot run effectively when there is hardly any Free memory.
But just the opposite is true, in the case of Windows 7’s memory management scheme, Free memory is wasted memory. The more memory that Windows 7 keeps in play, the better. By keeping memory full and juggling pages between the various lists along with using its Standby priority system, Windows 7 improves efficiency and does its best to keep memory pages from hitting the page file where Hard Faults and sluggish performance are more likely to occur."


However, understanding how it all works is only the first step, and you still may have a runaway process that is leaking memory (it never frees any of the memory it doesn't need anymore so it just perpetually takes up memory on the system that becomes useless to anything else).

Yes, I understand that you want memory to avoid reading/writing to the pagefile as much as possible. What I didn't know was that the system functions for the OS do not show up in the process list.

So, bottom line, since my computer is limited to 4GB max, what can I do to improve performance?

Can you screenshot the memory tab again when VirtualPC is not running?

I just did a Belarc check on my system. Two things of interest came up.

Under memory it listed 4 1GB modules but said "3328 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory".

It also showed under display "NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT [Display adapter]". Could this be what is using that other 770MB?