Windows Vista eating memory?

[Abrilet]

Hi everyone,
I wonder if anyone can suggest a solution for me here. I am running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 on a laptop with 1GB RAM. Everything has been fine for about a year but suddenly and for no obvious reason the memory usage has shot up. It starts at about 85-89% when it boots up and then if I open anything it goes up to 90-95% even with only one program open, e.g.Firefox or IE or Outlook. It can just about cope with 2 things running but any more and it practically freezes. I thought of doing a system restore to a couple of months back before the problem started, but unfortunately it seems to delete restore points older than about 10 days so I can't get back that far. XP doesn't delete restore points and as I'm not short of disc space I don't know why that's happening either. Just to say also, I've scanned for spyware and viruses and there are no processes running which shouldn't be as far as I can tell.
Does anyone have experience of this or ideas what the problem might be?

Thanks a lot
Jules

 

[BadBigBen]

The highest possible score for a "rating" is, I believe, 7.9

Linney, too much 7even there... Vista rating tops is 5.9, and yes I and probably 1000 more are baffled why it is not 10 as well...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[linney]

Windows 7 = 7.9, nothing like consistency is there?

 

[gigahertz]

Sounds like it could be a hardware problem memory went bad or unseated in socket. You're talking percentages - what is the actual memory ...

 

[Abrilet]

Hi all,

Thanks again for all the suggestions/help. I ran the memory test as per Linney's post and it showed up 'no errors' - which is at least good.
I can only think that it probably means I probably should just increase the amount of memory and that I've been running with a minimum.
Like I said before, for reasons I don't understand, it's improved slightly and now averages 75% when Windows starts up. At least it's not causing the problems it was before.

If anyone does have any more ideas or anything to add then great, but meantime I really appreciate all the advice.
Jules

 

[linney]

You still have some type of problem in my opinion. The Task Manager should show the "System Idle Processes" under the Processes tab, and that should be reading as close as possible to 99% if you are not running anything. Persistent readings of 75% for some Processes indicates a problem, what process is using this amount of CPU?

 

[Abrilet]

It is the System Idle using the most CPU, it fluctuates between 85-99% while reading Task Manager for a minute or two. But the most memory being used is usually host process for Windows, Microsoft Search Indexer, Windows Explorer (presume this is the desktop) Desktop Manager, more host processes for Windows etc etc - then the amount descreases significantly. Does that sound right?

 

[linney]

System Idle Processes" is a indication of how much of the Processor is free of load, the higher the better. Any other process hogging the CPU for any length of time, and not because you are running that particular process, would be a concern.

 

[Abrilet]

OK so does this sound like normal then in terms of what is running v what resource is being used?

 

[linney]

Sounds normal (Task Manager that is) from this distance, I wonder what it looks like close up? Do you want to post a screenshot?

http://www.uploadit.org/

http://www.photobucket.com/

http://reg.imageshack.us/register.php

 

[Abrilet]

Apologies for the delay here but typically, the percentage went down and there was nothing to show you - everything seemed normal after playing up all that time!

Today before opening anything and then just with Task Manager and Word open to paste an image into it was 74% memory use - which I'm presuming is still to much.

2 images are below - as it's not possible to see the whole list the first shows highest CPU and 2nd highest memory in use.

http://www.uploadit.org/my.php?image=http://server3.uploadit.org/files/JulesM-taskman1.jpg

http://www.uploadit.org/my.php?image=http://server2.uploadit.org/files/JulesM-taskman2.jpg

Hope it gives some idea! Thanks - Jules

 

[VB4Life]

I have read somewhere that Vista has this memory in wait, it builds a memory of the programs and process you normally use and hold a virtual memory usage of it for fast loading, but if you use something else it will spike and it should replace that chunk of memory with what your using and return the meter near where you first saw it, so the memory meter is kinda inaccurate. Also Firefox uses ~1/3rd the memory IE does!

 

[linney]

I couldn't get the links to show any image, don't know why, all I got was a page at that site that was virtually blank?

Can you tell us which process was using 74%?

 

[Abrilet]

That's really weird, I've just tried the links now as well and the image on both is there for a split second then disappears leaving a blank page. Very curious.

The top 2 processes are host for windows processes, then windows desk top manager, then explorer (not IE but presumably to do with the desktop), then more host processes then it drops down considerably.

VB4Life - I do use Firefox as I prefer it by far, useful to know about the memory as well.
Is that anything to do with indexing that you're referring to with Vista or am I way off? Only while researching this generally before coming here, I came across people experiencing problems with this facility, at least what you're talking about, sometimes causing an issue as Windows wasn't releasing the memory when it should, but I can't remember what it was called.