windows 7 hogging memory

[BernardStewart]

I am running windows 7 professional with 8Gb ram.

With only aol open the system is usung 1.6Gb ram (svchost takes 190Gb - in total 13 svchost.exe running taking about 350Gb and AOL takes 102Gb!

I have run numerous malware and spyware checks yet no probs.

Also, IE8 is slow to open pages.

Any ideas gratefully received.

 

[Nocandu]

Hi

I'm running Windows 7 on a computer with 8 gigs of ram also and 1.6 gigs of ram is what it uses with nothing running except my browser.

It has been the same since the first time I booted up the computer. I think that is just the way it is. If it is like XP the more you have the more it uses.

I have to say that I run a lot of ram intensive software (usually at the same time) and I never comes close to running out, so it probably doesn't matter.

Mike

 

[Nocandu]

Hi again,

On the other question you might like to try using Google Chrome for your browser.

I gave it a try and now I never open Internet Explorer.
It's simple and easy to use once you get used to the way it works and it's very fast.

I like the way you can just drag pages down to the bookmarks bar and make an instant icon to return to the page later.

I do it when I post questions so that I can get back to it the next day with one click.

Mike

 

[linney]

With Task Manager open, is there any one particular process that is increasing its' use of RAM while you watch?

Windows Vista's Task Manager: The harder-to-detect changes

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6161050.html

Try Safe Mode with Networking, and try another user from Normal Mode, see if you have the same problem.

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929135

How do I reset Windows Update components?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058/#appliesto

How to use Reset Internet Explorer Settings (RIES)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737#appliesto

Tips for solving problems with Internet Explorer

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/8038f9ac-9bf9-4809-8d75-fc42818d8af71033.mspx

 

[Nocandu]

Interesting everything seems to be pretty evenly spread across a wide selection of processes but the one that uses the most is "explorer.exe" (20,264k) and it isn't even running.

Next is chrome.exe with is but there doesn't seem to be any one thing that uses a lot of memory.

Like I said I haven't found it to be a problem.

I have yet to check out BlackViper.com to see what the profiles for make your computer lean and mean are but they have always been helpful in the past.

 

[tf1]

explorer.exe must be running: you are confusing the explorer process with Internet Explorer. Explorer is using 13.7k on my 32-bit system with 4GB memory.

With Firefox (74kb) and general background stuff running, my ststem uses around 1.3 GB. There are 12 svchost processes running.

What you are seeing is normal.

Regards: Terry

 

[Nocandu]

Ok I'm confusing Windows Explorer with Internet Explorer.

 

[kjv1611]

On svchost using so much RAM, I think it could be your cache/prefetch settings. You could try turning off prefetch/superfetch, and re-enabling to see if that clears it up, or leave it off altogether if you want. But with 8GB of Ram, I doubt it'll be an issue.

And actually, I think it's supposed to be somewhat that way, so that some things will load much faster, b/c parts of what they need is already stored in RAM rather than just no your hard drive - much faster access times from RAM than from any mechanical disk.

I haven't tried the Windows 7 version of this app, but the Windows Vista version gave ways to customize your prefetch/superfetch/cache settings, which I'd imagine the Windows 7 version does as well. It'd be worth a look if you're concerned about it:

http://www.totalidea.com/product.php?Product=Tweak-7

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Nelviticus]

I wouldn't trust apps like that one. When building Windows 7 Microsoft had an entire team whose only responsibility was startup performance so if Win7 does something with prefetch, you can be pretty certain that it's supposed to do it. See this post from the Win7 engineering team for an insight into how much work they put into this.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kjv1611]

Regardless of how good the Windows programers are or supposedly are, that app works - at least on Vista. I've yet to try it on Windows 7, but using the version for Vista, I have typically seen improvements. Of course, it's only doing things you would do on your own, just gives you a nice all-in-one type interface for several different things. Some refer to it as sort of a tweakui for Vista (and now 7). I'm not so sure about that, but regardless, it works.

I will say that I've not used it in a while, however. I mean it did make a difference, but not a SUPER big difference, I suppose.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me