Question about reading memory usage

[OldDogEyes]

Howdy,

I think that I am having a memory problem but want to be sure that I am reading the info in Windows Task Manager correctly...

Lately I've been noticing a lot of system slowdowns doing multiple things (like ripping audio CD's while editing ID3 tags and browsing the web, etc)... When I first got the system it never had a problem with multitasking...

So I opened WTM and noticed that my "Free" memory on the performance tab was zero or close to zero.

Here is my 1st question: At the bottom of the WTM is a line of info that shows processes, CPU usage and Physical memory. Should that physical memory percentage correspond to the amound of "Free" memory above in the performance tab? In other words, when I have zero memory available under free, should that percentage be around 100% or are they measuring two different things?

My 2nd question: Again under the performance tab in WTM, under the physical memory section there are four measurements - Total, Cached, Available and free. I thought that available and free meant the same thing in this context but obviously it doesn't. What do each of those mean and which one(s) should I be looking at...

BTW, my system specs in my UP are current... For anti-virus I am running ESET 4...

Thanks in advance for your help with my questions...

Doug

 

[SailingNut]

If you're using up nearly all of your 8GB, then it soulds like a big problem. (No pun intended.)

The menory shown in WTM is as follows: (I think)
Total = the actual amount of RAM in your system
Cached = the amount of data that has been written to the pagefile
Available = The amount of physical memory not used
Free = the amount of memory in the cache that doesn't contain useful information

To further look into this problem I would go to the processes tab and click on the Memory tab to sort by memory usage and see what processes are taking up the most meomry.

 

[OldDogEyes]

If you're using up nearly all of your 8GB, then it soulds like a big problem. (No pun intended.)

The menory shown in WTM is as follows: (I think)
Total = the actual amount of RAM in your system
Cached = the amount of data that has been written to the pagefile
Available = The amount of physical memory not used
Free = the amount of memory in the cache that doesn't contain useful information

To further look into this problem I would go to the processes tab and click on the Memory tab to sort by memory usage and see what processes are taking up the most meomry.

I have already looked at that... it's SVCHost. I downloaded Process Explorer but didn't really see anything that jumped out at me, but then again I didn't know what I was look at either.

So it just happened again - free memory went to ZERO but the memory % was hovering around 15%... (the info at the bottom of the WTM screen).

So free memory does not sync up with memory %age.

 

[logicearth]

Don't worry about you memory. "Free" is not what you think it is.
It is perfectly normal for it to go to zero. But you still have plenty of memory to go around.

What you really need to pay attention to is "Available" that tells you how much memory is available to applications.