W7 Memory Problem = Slowness - Mystery - Is W8 The answer?

HI;

I'm running a i7 2.8 with 16GB of ram with a 40GB caching SSD. I start out under 2gb after a reboot and slowly climb higher and higher in my memory use. Often in 1/2 a day or less I'm using around 12 or 14GB of ram with chrome, picasa and a few other small apps open. Then I go to open something like sound forge and my memory use climbs to 15.8GB or so and things start to hang, sound forge hangs, web pages don't want to scroll, etc. Closing and re-starting the browser will help a little bit (and will free a little memory, but it is rapidly re-used up), but the problem won't clear up until I reboot again.

I'm a pretty experienced user and highly doubt I've loaded any kind of virus, I've run malwarebyes and housecall multiple times and it has not found anything. I've been through my process / startup list multiple times and can't find anything that that I don't know what it is.

When the system is showing it's low on memory and starts to be slow to respond and I look at task manager and resource manager, generally I am not excessively using the hard drives, though if I push it with more open programs I will start to swap. Typically when it slows I'm not maxing out my processor by any means.

I'm running current video drivers, I updated all my other drives and bios just about a month ago and I continue to have this problem. I'm at a loss and am extremely frustrated. I end up having to reboot every 1 to 2 days on a system that used to be able to go for a month without a reboot.

My laptop with W7 it only has 8GB of ram and has a Core2Duo processor which specs out to about 1/3 the speed of my desktop processor. I can leave my laptop booted for a couple weeks at a time with a lot of stuff open and I never seem to run into these type of issue. It seems like I have to push my laptop really hard before I get it to start dragging and even then, I've normally not used up my 8GB of ram, I'm normally CPU bound.

I attached a screen shot that compares the performance screen from my laptop vs the desktop. I have about the same amount of programs open on both right now, perhaps even more on the laptop. The laptop is running fine and the desktop is being slugish. The one thing I've noticed that I can't explain is that the Kernel Memory in particular the non-paged always seems to run very high on the desktop. When I look at the running processes on the desktop when the ram is used up and it becomes slow, the processes do not even add up to using all the ram (I have show processes from all users check)

My only guess is this is some kind of memory leak in the system or a driver that I just can't track down.

I'm very reluctantly considering upgrading to Windows 8. I've used it a little and don't care for the interface changes at all, but I don't know what else to try at this point to get my system running better again. I've even been considering buying a new system because of this, but that seem so silly because I'm convinced this hardware is generally more than adequate for what I need to do.

Any last ideas for me before I take the dive into running the Windows 8 upgrade and hoping that solves the problem?

Thank you,

Jamie

I ran ADW cleaner as was suggested to someone else in another thread. As far as I can tell the items it found are not malicious.

# AdwCleaner v2.111 - Logfile created 02/09/2013 at 14:42:47
# Updated 05/02/2013 by Xplode
# Operating system : Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 (64 bits)
# User : Jamie Dolan - JAMIEDOLAN-PC
# Boot Mode : Normal
# Running from : J:\Google Docs\Downloads-Chrome\AdwCleaner.exe
# Option [Search]


***** [Services] *****


***** [Files / Folders] *****

File Found : C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\.autoreg
Folder Found : C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Plasmoo
Folder Found : C:\ProgramData\Ask
Folder Found : C:\ProgramData\InstallMate
Folder Found : C:\Users\Jamie Dolan\AppData\Local\APN
Folder Found : C:\Users\Jamie Dolan\AppData\Roaming\OpenCandy

***** [Registry] *****

Key Found : HKCU\Software\APN PIP
Key Found : HKCU\Software\Conduit
Key Found : HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\S
Key Found : HKLM\Software\Conduit
Key Found : HKLM\Software\Dexpot\OpenCandy
Key Found : HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tracing\apntoolbarinstaller_RASAPI32
Key Found : HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tracing\apntoolbarinstaller_RASMANCS
Key Found : HKLM\Software\PIP

***** [Internet Browsers] *****

-\\ Internet Explorer v9.0.8112.16457

[OK] Registry is clean.

-\\ Mozilla Firefox v16.0.2 (en-US)

File : C:\Users\Jamie Dolan\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\r5b0mol3.default\prefs.js

[OK] File is clean.

-\\ Google Chrome v24.0.1312.57

File : C:\Users\Jamie Dolan\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Preferences

[OK] File is clean.

-\\ Opera v12.12.1707.0

File : C:\Users\Jamie Dolan\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\operaprefs.ini

[OK] File is clean.

*************************

AdwCleaner[R1].txt - [1649 octets] - [09/02/2013 14:42:47]

########## EOF - C:\AdwCleaner[R1].txt - [1709 octets] ##########

Hi there Jamiedolan,do you have any virtual memory assigned?

proudtobegreek said:

Hi there Jamiedolan,do you have any virtual memory assigned?

Yes, see attached image. I don't think I'm swapping at all right now it looks like it is sitting at 1GB.

I've been booted for one day or so now. I've had chrome with around 15 to 20 tabs open. I have Canary open with a few tabs, NotePad ++, Skype, Paint, and Crashplan.

Taskmanager is showing that I'm using 13.3GB out of 16GB right now, Physical Memory at 83%. If I open a couple more programs I'm going to max out the ram and start slowing down.

Jamie

sbrads said:

It will be something you've installed. It might be easiest to image your Win7 drive to somewhere safe, format and reinstall Win7, add your essential programs only and see that's OK, & image that before moving on with further app installs. Now you can restore your original or a basic setup that you can gradually add to. If the problem rears its ugly head again you will have a good idea what program or driver caused it.

Thank You, Yes I agree that this approach is likely to work, but is very time consuming to re-build my whole system. I also have at least several program that I've gotten from Giveaway of the day that I will have to purchase if I re-install, which isn't the end of the world, but... if I can avoid it.

Maybe I just need to get a new system so I can keep this one on for the things I need it for.

theveterans said:

You have too many processes open with your desktop . Some of those programs are having a memory leak thus making Windows write on pagefile to free up RAM. Windows 8 may or may not fix your problem, but closing lots of programs definitely will.

I'd have to agree that I think the memory leak portion of your comment is accurate, but an i7 with 16GB of ram, based on past experience and other systems I've worked on it takes a whole *LOT* to hit the "too many processes" mark.

Based on the fact that I can run this amount of stuff with few problems on my W7 laptop with a processor that is 1/3 the speed, only 8GB of ram and a much slower drive, I can only conclude that there is a problem with my desktop computers setup.

Honestly my desktop computer feels like it is behaving more like it did back when I only had 8GB of ram in it.

Jamie