Solved Sleep function and system memory

[Lusankya]

OK so let me just state right off the bat that I'm not having any system issues but I found this odd.

I started using the Sleep function on the computer instead of completely shutting it down (I still shut the computer down at night though). Anyway I noticed after doing a complete start up of the system I usually have about 60 processes or so showing in the task manager and about 1.2GB of memory used.

Now after putting the system to sleep and then waking it up I notice that I still have the same amount of processes in the task manager showing up but the memory usage drops to below 1GB to around 850MB - 950MB. Does anyone else have this happen? Is this normal or is something amiss? I just kind of find this weird.

 

[DavidE]

That's normal and nothing to be concerned about.

 

[Lusankya]

Nice to hear . Thanks for posting.

 

[DavidE]

You're welcome.

 

[LMiller7]

I suspect this is due to workset trimming.

Understand that the amount of RAM used by a process, even those belonging to the system, is not controlled by the process itself but by the memory manager. The basic principles of how this works has been documented but many of the details have not. I suspect that the memory manager doesn't know anything about the sleep function because it doesn't need to. Most likely the memory manager sees a number of processes with memory that hasn't been used recently (because the computer has been sleeping) and trims the memory they are using. This is a routine operation and can occur very quickly.

But this is all just guesswork. Since Microsoft has most likely never documented these details I can do nothing else. But I have no reason to believe that this memory difference is anything but standard operating procedure for the OS.

There are many details of how Windows works internally that has never been publicly documented. The same applies for Linux and Mac OS and other operating systems as well. There are good reasons for this. One is that if some detail is documented some developer somewhere will find a way of taking advantage of it. If the behavior were to be changed at a later date the application may break, and you can easily guess who will get the blame.

 

[Lusankya]

Thanks for the reply LMiller7 . That is a very nice explanation of what probably is happening. Thanks for the replies again guys . I'm marking this thread as solved.

PS: It's always nice getting an answer from someone in the same Country and Province which doesn't happen very often lol .