Another question must be addressed.. This laptop belongs to your school, so you might ask them first ... I would be surprised if they allow it as they have already installed the apps that they want their students to use... I could be wrong though..
Surprisingly, there are loopholes in the technology policy. We mainly use office and photoshop so I'll be fine.
I suspect third party apps. I disabled a ton of startup items, but the ram usage still sucks. Do third party apps like to install themselves as services? I have huge list of services and I don't think all are MS services.
Zigzag3143
Win 7 is the way to go (chess titans, yeah!) . The only reason I'm trying to reduce xp bloat is because I planing on using xp mode to run older apps.
I just booted an XP tower I have sitting on a shelf. It's running XP Pro SP3 and using Windows Defender and Avira for security software. No tweaking was done with services or anything of that matter, and it's using 173 MB of memory. I couldn't get this system's memory usage to be as high as yours without trying to do so on purpose.
My system is using 2 1/2 gb memory while idle. Any idea what could possibly chew up all of that ram? The disparity between our systems is quite large. I ruled out malware. Interesting thing though, after boot up, the system is quite responsive even when running photoshop and the like.
You should be able to figure that out pretty easily by opening task manager, and seeing what processes are using up the memory.
They don't add up to anywhere near how much task manager claims the system is using. Any ideas?
Are you checking the box to show processors for all users? Where are you getting your info from, claiming that it is using 2.5 GB while idle?
Show processs from all users is checked. I got the 2.5 GB ram usage by adding the PF usage under the performance tab and adding that to the physical ram under ccleaner and then subtracting the 128 mb for integrated graphics.
Okay, I think that might be the problem. I'm not sure why you are turning it into something complicated, but try this instead.
Look on the Performances tab. Under Commit Charge, look at total. That should be relatively close to your actual usage, as well as the number listed on the very bottom right of that window, along the bottom banner, also labeled as Commit Charge.
Peak tells you the highest your memory usage went during this session.
I've also had people suggest that a better way is to look on the Performances Tab, under Physical Memory, and subtract available from total to find out what you are actually using.
Either way, the number should be relatively close, and much more accurate than what you were doing above. Try these out and see what your usage is.
A screenshot will speed this analysis process up. Show us your task manager.
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