Abnormal RAM usage / reported usage

omaigadlol · 02 May 2015

Hi,

I have 8GB of RAM (7.90 usable) and I get "Your computer is running low on RAM" messages, up to the point where Windows asks me to close programs or even closes some. The problem is I don't see this reflected in the Task Manager -> Memory column for the running processes. Any idea what's eating up my RAM or why Windows is falsely reporting it's low on RAM?

Screenshot: the reported RAM adds to around 2GB, but the reported 77% would mean 6GB are being used. What's up?!

LMiller7 · 02 May 2015

Post a screenshot of Task Manager - Performance tab when the problem occurs.

Adding up the items in the process memory usage column will never equal total usage. It was never intended that they would. There are major users of memory that are not processes, not all of which are shown in Task Manager. And in this case not all processes are shown. You must select "Show processes from all users" to see all processes.

The error message states that the computer was low on memory. The problem usually has nothing to do with RAM at all.

Ztruker · 02 May 2015

Is it RAM or Virtual Memory? If the latter then check disk space.

omaigadlol · 15 Aug 2018

I added more RAM and I'm still affected by this. I only have a bunch of chrome tabs which add up to a couple gigs, not 10.

Any ideas?

Barman58 · 15 Aug 2018

It seems a little higher than I would expect but within tolerance, Windows 7, Unlike older inefficient operating systems such as Windows XP, works on the principle that unused Memory is Wasted, so it takes control of the majority of available memory and will release it if any process requires it. The Windows 7 OS is a much better memory manager than was used in XP so there is no need for user intervention, windows 7 is better at this management than XP or any of us users.

Set your virtual memory to a few gigabytes, on the fastest drive you can spare it from, (the XP norm was 1.5 times the RAM total - which would be 24GB in your case ), you may be able to reduce this if you do not receive any memory errors, but do not remove the Virtual memory store to zero as some (badly written), games and programs will crash or throw an error if there is no virtual memory , even in a 32 or 64GB system

omaigadlol · 15 Aug 2018

Well, the problem is there's nothing using the RAM. If I try to launch something memory consuming, I get an error or Windows just automatically closes the program consuming the most memory. It doesn't start using the missing 10GB. This is pretty frustrating and stupid even at work, on 32GB of RAM.

Can't I just disable this smart, super awesome RAM wasting feature?

Barman58 · 15 Aug 2018

There are 38 instances of Chrome maybe due to a lot of add-ons which are a common cause of memory issues and a number of other high memory usage programs running in the part of the Task manager visible - I doubt all of these are needed at one time, add in other services and you may be using more memory than you think, also you need to give sufficient hard disk space to virtual ram.

I can't remember seeing any memory issue since old low memory XP machines

LMiller7 · 15 Aug 2018

You have a commit limit of 17 GB and 16 GB RAM. As the commit limit is Pagefile size + RAM size (minus a small overhead) this shows that you have a very small pagefile. Out of memory warnings and errors mean the commit charge is approaching or would exceed the commit limit. They have nothing to do with a shortage of available memory and Windows doesn't even have a warning or error for that.

You have 8110 MB of Cached memory with only 2174 available. This means the majority of the Cached value is on the Modified list. This will be shown in the Resource Monitor. The memory manager would like to write this to the pagefile and make the memory available for other purposes. But with a too small pagefile that cannot happen.

There are 2 problems caused by the small pagefile. Set a reasonable pagefile size, preferably system managed, and see what the results are. The pagefile does not work like most people think it does. There are very many misinformed Internet articles about this.

omaigadlol · 25 Aug 2018

Alright. Set up a recommended-size pagefile and it's much better now. Not sure how all my RAM gets wasted, but it's bearable now, aside from the random times it dumps data to disk and I can't use it

. Thanks!

omaigadlol · 27 Aug 2018

Looking good on my work machine

Thanks, guys!