SysMain service slowing down the system

Hello,

I've discovered my system is slowing down and with a bit of googling I've managed to narrow the problem down the SysMain service.





As you can see, when its off everything seems to be ok, but when its on it starts to take up system resources. I've got 6gb ram and the amount it takes may not seem like much, but I can definitely feel the difference in most applications and it bothers me very much.

Any info on how to resolve this would be great, thanks.

There is nothing absolute about superfetch. One would need to weigh the benefits of superfetch (better memory management, programs load faster) with its disadvantages (its own memory consumption which in your case is somewhat high). If you feel your system is more responsive without superfetch, by all means go ahead and stop the service. Also make sure you set its startup type to diabled in the Services Configuration window.

Yes I've already disabled it to start up automatically, but what strikes me as odd is that it came up all of a sudden from nowhere. I haven't installed or changed anything the past few days and I think it isn't normal for a just to randomly decide to take up more resources, then again this is windows. My concerns are that it might be a bigger issue, I just got this PC a few weeks ago you see and I want everything to run flawlessly^^.

I guess I'll just keep it off and hope everythings ok. Thank you for the reply.

I think it is your 61 processes, not Superfetch that are ''slowing'' your system.

Btw, at 2% CPU and 31% memory that story of yours about all that slowness doesn't sound real convincing. You're micromanaging, pal. I'd advise & recommend Linux as therapy.

Teerex said:

I think it is your 61 processes, not Superfetch that are ''slowing'' your system.

Btw, at 2% CPU and 31% memory that story of yours about all that slowness doesn't sound real convincing. You're micromanaging, pal. I'd advise & recommend Linux as therapy.

Chrome tabs are listed as separate processes I have around 45 without a browser on. All the same, I believe the machine is capable of handling 61 processes.

I use adobe products heavily in my work so with those on, theres a noticeable difference in performance.

Also I would love to use linux if I could, I've no idea what your smartass remark is about. If you've nothing constructive to add regarding this issue, I advise & recommend you don't bother posting.

It means that I don't see the point and logic in your posts and thread. You suspected superfetch, which seems to be using the usual amount of memory for a x64 with 6GB. Slowness with 6 GB? Then you disabled it in Services. Done.

So, you disabled Superfetch, the system is now going Usain Bolt on you. What is the point of this thread? Advice to others?

As Bill said, we've all been around Superfetch misunderstandings here, 'oh it ate ll my memory, oh it's loading all kinds of stuff of my disk'. Look around through the board, you didn't stumble on a major discovery.

Your story is the most unbelievable of all. You 'sense' 100 MB delta on a 6 GB x64 system? C'mon man, you're rippin' me apart...

Maybe its my fault since I didn't clarify the pre-history to my thread, but I mean how was I to know the forum police was patrolling?

I started using Windows 7 for the first time last week, until then I've been using xp and previous versions and never used it. A service I've never heard on an OS I've barely used suddenly starts taking up more ram - naturally I go ask about.

I work with Photoshop on pretty large files and it was there and in other similar scenarios when the slowdown was noticeable. I never said I 'sense' 100MB ram difference. The images I posted were merely to illustrate the essence of the issue. I thought there might be an actual reason for a change this sudden, perhaps relating to an actual problem with my system.

In a nutshell, Superfetch didn't use high amounts of ram previously but only started today and was causing some application to perform less than great.

So you see the reason and logic behind my posts and thread were to inform my self in the matter by 'Seven Pros' such as yourself.

Clearly I've accomplished my goal since apparently the problem was absolutely random and natural and by eliminating the service I've resolved the issue.

Exactly, if you got the result you are for, it's ok.

The sysmain (Superfetch+Readyboost) service has one simple function - move stuff (applications, media, files) you often use (statistically and temporally measured and ascertained) from the slow hard disk (if it is not SSD) to the fast RAM.

This can have unintended consequences. Consider this scenario: although Superfetch lifts stuff from the disk with very low priority (so evertyhing you or the system does is more urgent than this) it introduces some overhead at that time when it is loading it. You have a lot of memory and big files so it loads lots of stuff. It is still new, so it didn't have the chance to learn a lot.

And it seems it never will. Since you are aiming for a WinXP scenario, and are using an application I don't use and I can''t evaluate your scenario (and every user here is a scenario) - do what suits you best. But I was just trying to make the point that it's not a panacea. I like my Superfetch just fine, it's nice to see Outlook, Word, WMP load with minimal hard disk LED lightshow (although I'm running a fresh install again so it's now on a learning curve still).