Too much memory usage???

davron94 · 30 Jul 2010

I have a Dell Dimension 2400 that i recently installed W7 ultimate on, going from XP. The system has 320GB HD, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 8400 512mb graphics card, and a P4 2.66 Ghz processor. its a fairly old machine (2004). It ran very very well and I had very few hang ups or issues running XP. Now that I have switched to W7, the system is not as fast and tends to hang up occasionally. when running graphics (kid games off the internet) it lags and tiles images. I notice in my task manager that it uses at least 500mb to 800mb of memory just sitting idle. This seems extreme.
I have ended most of the processes or tasks that i can do without and stopped the indexing function as well, and am using tune-up utilities software.

I thought that th W7 OS was supposed to be faster and more stable than XP, but it seems that XP ran much smoother with much less memory usage just for the OS.

Is there anything more i can do to improve the performance, especially running internet games (it's my daughter's computer)? I am maxed out on RAM, as the MB only supports up to 2GB.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Petey7 · 30 Jul 2010

usually tune-up software does more harm than good. Some are occasional recommended, like CCleaner. 7 does use more RAM and the remarks about it being faster generally apply to newer computers, but even on old ones it can do a pretty good job. I recommend looking at this: Optimize Windows 7

I don't know if I'd recommend everything it says, like turning off system restore (a bad idea on a 320GB HDD). What video card do you have? It may be the video card causing the problem with the games. 7 has more visual effects plus online games are pretty fancy these days, and an older video card might not be able to handle all of it.

Wishmaster · 30 Jul 2010

I wouldn't worry to much about RAM use, as Seven will free up RAM on its own when needed.
It will use as much as it can to make things faster. Around 750MB-1GB of RAM should be normal at idle. Nothing to worry about here.

4GB would be the sweet spot for 7, but 2GB should be suffecient. Especially for Internet Games etc. Will only be a issue with grpahic intensive games or any other memory intensive tasks.

I wouldnt try to tweak it into using less RAM however, aside from disabling un-needed start up programs.

One other thing to consider aside from the link Petey7 provided, what Antivirus are you running?

I would start with cleaning up junk:
Run CCleaner,found here : CCleaner - Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download

and a quick scan with Malwarebytes, found here: Malwarebytes
(free version)

Youd be surprised how much junk files CCleaner will remove, and much it can help.

Alternatively, open a elevated CMD promp (in start search box type cmd and right click the result and choose run as admin)

and type:
cleanmgr sageset:50
Click all the little boxes (except maybe thumbs if you do not want to regenerate them after)

press Enter
then type: cleanmgr sagerun:50

this will clean up all other temporary files and junk files that are no longer needed.

freaky88 · 30 Jul 2010

i have 6 gb and i get the occasional windows explorer crash