Memory issues win 7 64 bit - Driving me crazy

[steveoz]

Hi Guys,

I wondered if someone would be able to help me with an issue which is driving me crazy today, I'm running Win 7 64 bit Ent with 8gb of RAM.

I've got an issue where the system is caching around 5gb of that Ram, and no matter what I do I can't seem to get the system to release the damn memory. I thought prefetch was the cause but it is not, I also tried running the ProcessIdleTasks command but that didn't help either.

Can anyone please help? Does anyone know how I can clear down the cached memory?



Thanks,

 

[marsmimar]

Hello Steve and welcome to Seven Forums.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your machine. Windows 7 has a totally different way of dealing with memory compared to previous versions. The Windows 7 philosophy is simple: "Unused memory is wasted memory." That means Windows 7 will assign unused memory to another memory function. More often than not memory is cached for future use. This previous Forum thread has more info about how Windows 7 utilizes memory.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/52731-can-someone-please-explain-cached-memory.html

 

[steveoz]

This is understandable, but, Windows 7 in this case was caching 5gb of Ram and was strangling my audio applications plugins. It's frustrating when Windows 7 thinks it knows better, and wouldn't release cached RAM for me to opperate what I really wanted to opperate instead of what it 'thinks' I want to opperate.

P.S thank you for the reply and the welcome I have observed topics on the forum before as a lover of Win 7, I think it is a great opperating system and has been reliable for the past few years (no regular rebuilds required like previous versions!). There are a lot of knowledgeable people on here, and most topics I have read have good answers so I have never felt the need to register. However, recently this issue has developed and I am affraid I need to ask the community, please don't think I am leaching I normally like to contribute before asking questions

 

[steveoz]

This may help explain my frustration a little more, I keep my computer in check and disable unwanted services and apps through msconfig, I allow a certain number of applications to run in the background, but memory usage is minimal. I think it's crazy for Microsoft not to allow me to control allocation of the memory better:

 

[steveoz]

Sorry for spamming, but I realise this could be more of an issue with the way FL9 producer uses RAM, but, that said, there surely should be an easier workaround for me to manually release the crazy amount of cached ram?

Thanks

 

[logicearth]

There is nothing wrong here. That cached RAM is as good as free memory when its needed. LEAVE IT ALONE!

The only value of importance is "Available" which shows you have over 4GBs of memory at your disposal. The rest is taken up by your applications NOT by the cache.

Again, the Standby memory is not the cause of your issue. As far as you and applications need to be concerned, it is FREE memory.

 

[logicearth]

Do you have a pagefile? How big is it?
Also, it might be best to contact support for the application in question.

This might be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_8CEdbQXaQ

 

[steveoz]

I'd agree there was nothing wrong if Windows would free up some of the 5gb of cached Ram when the free memory reaches a critical state but it isn't.

In this case, the audio application was only taking up 1.7gb of ram, the cached Ram doesn't seem to be released. I'm only actually using 3.2gb at that current time, so for Windows to allow free memory to get so low and stop my program from running when I have another 5gb free is just plain crazy. I'm not going to upgrade my Ram to 16gb just because windows is so cache hungry. My audio app peaks at 2gb, so I should have plenty to go around.

I guess my point is, that regardless of what the application is doing, Windows is clearly not releasing cached Ram when needed and is allowing applications that I am running to run out of memory in favour of reserving more than I am actually using for applications it 'thinks' I may use.

 

[steveoz]

Aha, thanks just watching your link

 

[logicearth]

The application is failing being able to reserve a large enough block of memory (this could be the limitation of its 32bit nature). It has nothing with to do with Windows not releasing enough standby memory. The application fails before it gets to that point.

At most a 32bit application can access a max of 2GBs or if it is Large Address Aware it can address up to 4GBs. I suspect your application is 32bit without Large Address Aware enabled, limiting it to 2GBs.

 

[steveoz]

Thanks, it's a little strange as the initial error was at 1.3gb usage as in the screen print, I assumed that as the free memory was so low (16mb) it wasn't enough available to load the next individual .wav (which are a few hundred mb each).

I've seen it running up to 2gb (most projects hover around 1.7-1.8ish with a full EW Symphonic Choir loaded in and various other plugins).

Since coming home and restarting the machine I've just loaded the same project back in and it hasn't failed this time. However, reloading the choir plugin whilst running the project causes the error (this time peaked at just over 1.7gb).

I'll investigate the methods pointed out in the youtube tutorial and see if I can find a solution.

Thanks for the input