Task manager is lying

[blackdot]

I have 2 gigs of ram, the taskmangager tells me that I am using 45% of it, and confirmes that under 'performance', where it states that 916mb are in use for memory.

But if I sum up all the memory usage under 'processes' i come to about 450mb. What is using the remaining 450mb's ?

 

[severedsolo]

Hi blackdot, have you clicked "Show Processes for All Users" under Task Manager?

 

[Mike Connor]

Computers generally and software as well, are completely incapable of "lying".

It is not always a good idea to believe everything you see on a screen, because the software shows what it is programmed to show, and that does not necessarily reflect reality.

In order to "lie" you have to know the truth. Machines don't know anything at all.

Summing up various things often results in considerable discrepancies. This can be due to many things. Various units, like GBytes, incorrect interpretation or display of those units, etc etc.

If you want very accurate analysis of various things, then you need accurate tools and the wherewithal to use them.

Regards....Mike Connor

 

[blackdot]

Hi blackdot, have you clicked "Show Processes for All Users" under Task Manager?

yes I have.

I've uploaded an image to show my situation:[

 

[Brink]

Hello Blackdot,

Looking in the Memory tab in Resource Monitor can help ID what is using your memory a bit better. It's most likely memory that has been filled by superfetch and just has not been released yet as needed.



Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[logicearth]

Not everything that consumes memory is a process. Furthermore, the values Task Manager show does not have a 1 to 1 relation to how much physical memory a process is taking. Most of the time the memory reserved or used by a process is virtual memory.

 

[cluberti]

Agreed - task manager is just that, a task manager. Using it to determine accurate values for CPU time, memory (RAM) usage, etc is fraught with peril at best. Using Resource Monitor (resmon.exe) when you want to see what resources your system is using is a much better alternative, and the best one that is installed with Windows by default. Process Explorer from sysinternals is better at more things than ResMon is, but that's a separate download (and has a slight learning curve, which ResMon does not).