Physical Memory at 50%

united States Dollars. But that was at a time that DDR2 RAM was literally cheaper than a bag of dirt. And that RAM was on sale at newegg. It's gotten more expensive sense then and DDR3 (which is what you have) is even more expensive. Looks like it would be ~$90 or more for the kind of upgrade I did (two new sticks). If you only have one stick of RAM currently installed, you can get another for ~$45. Sorry about that. I shouldn't have mentioned a price and got your hopes up. I think you should look around google and see how else to decrease you RAM usage for now.

Very true. Do you also live in the US? I can try to find out exactly what type of RAM you have and make recommendations from Newegg (the cheapest place around IMO).

How much RAM the system uses at idle depends largely on how much RAM you actually have.

Also remember, that what task manager is showing as RAM use is only whats currently active. In all reality, you likely have 0 RAM available, the rest is simply loaded and in standby mode.
Which is a good thing!

I agree with everone else. Cut out all the stuff at start up.

Stuff Like Adobe, Yahoo, etc is totally pointless to have start up w/Windows.

the only things I have start with Windows is:
Antivirus, ATI CCC, Sound Card, & Acronis. (This IMO are neccesities)
OH, and.. I leave the side bar as a start up item :)

Everything else has been disabled.

kelvinwgr said:

whs said:

Follow the advice Dinish gave you because the 78 processes stem most likely from too many startup programs. I would, however, leave the AV program enabled or stay off the web during the experiment. Once you know that this was the problem, you can enable the startups more selectively - the fewer, the better. That will not impact the operability of your system. The only one that is really needed (apart from the ones you want expressis verbis) is the AV.

1. Thanks for the advice. Yes in fact I did went to msconfig to disable not all, but same of the startup programs as I do not know which is critical for the system to operate. Therefore, I only disable those that I thought was unnecessary.

2. So the startup programs will actually contribute to the 78 processes, am I right to say that?

1. None are "critical" for the system except the AV program. And that is critical for your protection. Even if a program is not in the startups, it will be started when it is called upon. So nothing is lost.

2. Of course they do. The more programs/processes you have started, the more will run. Sounds logical, doesn't it.