Diff.between "available" and "free" physical memory?

Well, I have Windows 7 64bit and 4GB of RAM 512MB being used by on board Radeon and often have FREE memory around 15-20 and sometimes single digits but what I can' figure out (if anyone can shed some light on this) is why if I have anywhere from about 900MB -over 1GB, like 1200MB or so, I am getting constant 'Out of Memory' warnings while running Google Chrome and also the old 'Low memory' Telling my I should close 'The Program' and then it usually list 'Google Chrome' or 'Desktop Gadgets' or some offending, memory hogging program. I don't see why it would warn me I am running out of memory consider I still have around or close to 30% of the memory still available.

This problem has driven me crazy ever since I have installed Windows.

More information is needed.
Posing a screenshot of Task Manager -Performance tab when the problem occurs would be a big help.

Richman1 said:

I am getting constant 'Out of Memory' warnings while running Google Chrome

I've see in other forums that this is about the release of "free" memory in Win7, Google Chrome seems to be in the black list of applications that don't play fair and don't release this kind of memory as they should.

Thanks to all who replied

LMILLER7 - I'll have to reproduce the problem and then post a scrn shot of the task manager for you as I have been keeping programs closed and trying to keep open browser tabs to a minimum so that it DOES NOT occur.

Golden - CTRL+SHIFT+ESC did not open any Chrome task manager

To all - I think if I remember correctly that I had the same problem when I was running 64 bit Waterfox exclusively for browsing the web. It wouldn't be hard to believe that Chrome doesn't play well with releasing memory but then if Windows Task Manager says that there is still around 1GB of memory available that I shouldn't be getting 'Out of Memory' warnings as from what I understand is that 'Available' memory is as ready to use as 'Free' memory and most forums state that since Windows 7 loads frequently used programs for faster launching, your Free memory should always be either in the single or no more than double digit range.

Golden said:

Sorry, I don't have these problems with Chrome......its way faster than IE for me

The only thing I can suggest is to examine the services and programs in your startup.

Golden, Thanks for the sudgestion as I try to check these periodically but sometimes it skips my mind and haven't looked at them in a while.
However, Startup tab under msconfig has nothing in it that I didn't put there.
Services only has one entry that I don't recognize which is "QosServM.exe" but upon research I found that this executable is usually linked with Avaya IP softphone which software I did install so that doesn't appear to be out of the ordinary and I can't find anything else in Services that is out of the ordinary.

maxie said:

Hi there ... Part of your problem is you have far to many Tabs open .. Cannot imagine why you would need as many open .. Cut down on the Tabs it will use less memory .. And don't leave your computer on for days on end

Maxie, Are you serious? I do not agree with this as a person should be able to do with a computer anything that a computer is capable of doing without resulting in resigning himself to a mode of limited use. In the days when I was running Windows XP and we didn't even have "Tabbed" browsing (which is supposed to be easier on system resources) I could routinely have 200 browser WINDOWS open without having memory issues and that was all with 384MB or RAM. Oh and the reason why people have more than the 2-3 browser tabs that you apparently only allow open is that its a browser capability and when one is doing research and are constantly referring back and forth it prevents them from having to open and close tabs 150 times. Shutting down a computer every day? This is also not necessary as I have worked in corporate environments and those pc's rarely get shut down and are on 24/7. I have had my own computer on for 9 months without being shut down and no slowing down or other issues. Of course I am always on the machine but the only reason a pc would need to be shut down is something reacquiring a reboot or to reset poorly designed software that may have issues and need the system reset. But then that isn't the pc's fault, its the software designer's.

On my Lenovo T420i, task manager shows:

Total: 3979, Cached: 2156, Available: 2105, Free: 1 (MB)

Everything seems to slow right down if I try to print something from Adobe Reader or Word.

If I run System Internals process explorer, I see the page faults jump from < 500 to about 27,000, so I'm guessing that if I add another 4Gb of memory I will create a lot more free memory and reduce the amount of page faults/swapping...which I presume is at the root of the slowdowns.