Memory is maxing out at idle!

So I have been having some sort of problem with my pc. Wasn't sure what was going on. Went through the whole malware thread and my pc is clean. Deleted some old programs that are not needed thinking this may have been an issue but I am still having the same problem.

My computer becomes unresponsive after a couple days. I am running windows 7 x64 with 4 gb memory. It has been running for about 12 hours now and my pc is starting to lag pretty bad. I started task manager and something is using up all my ram. Computer is idle yet I see the memory usage mainly sitting around 2.40 gb. it will slowly raise to max then slowly drop back down. Once it dropped to 765 mb but just briefly.

Any ideas on what could be causing this?

 

Hi!! Sounds like you have a program that is hogging your resources, or one with a bad memory leak. You will have to find that program and get rid of it.
You should be able to find it with Task Manager.
theefool will probably post here and give you some suggestions how to do that!

 

can you show us a picture of task manager? should be easy to pick out.
*EQL*

 

Attached a pic of the processes running. Not sure which tab you wanted to take a look at.

 

Please post another screenshot with "Show all processes" checked on, and sorted to descending Memory used. (see attachment for example)

We should be able to zero in on the offending memory hog, that way.

Bazza

 

here is a pic as requested. I'll tell ya it took me over 5 minutes to open the snipping tool and take the picture. You would think I was running windows with 1gig instead of 4! even the pointer is jumping all over the place when I try to move it around.

 

It looks like Windows Search is wrongly setup.

What graphics card do you have? Which browser(s) do you use?

 

Evga gtx 460 and I use IE9

 

Hi!! If the OP has done a reboot recently, the memory could have been released back to the OS. Need to take screen shot when he has problems, and before reboot.

 

Ok, that should rule out another possibility

Can you set Search Indexer so that it only searches your files and folders NOT the entire disk(s)?

Can you attach a screenshot of TaskMan's Performance tab please?

 

Crap man, more like 256 MB, here's my taskman: Yes I do have 2GB more than you but it shouldn't make a difference. Make a new administrator account and log into it. Sometimes these things get corrupted. Just don't delete the old one first.

 

What is this used for and what should the settings be? I do not know what this is used for other than searching for files and folders. I should also let you know I have a printer and shared folders on this computer. Not sure if that is going to have aNy effect on this or not......

As for performance, right now it is running smooth. Not sure what happened but it is running at 1.17gb which is a drastic improvement from just a few minutes ago. I will post images once it jumps back up there which I'm sure it will in a little bit.

 

Windows Search and Search indexer? I've never used them, always disabled them from day 1, I know where my files are and I have Agent Ransack for when I need a file with a specific string in. Here's a piece on tweaking Vista's indexing options, I guess W7 will be similar with XP less so.

 

Hi!! If you really want to know which processes are running on your PC. This is a good freeware program. Here is every process running on my PC when idle. If you hover your curser over the process, it will tell you all about it. You can right click it and it will search it on the internet!! It has a ton of information. I use this in place of Task Manager!

 

Here you go....Also attached one of the resource monitor as well.

 

most likely you have your windows search set up to index while your computer is idle. personally i hate windows search so i just turn it off. otherwise take the other recommendation and choose which folders you want it to index (eg my documents and not all of C)
*EQL*

 

Sure looks like Search has to go.

Did you try creating a new Admin user account and testing from there, as suggested by Augie?

I'm curious as to what's causing the big dip to around 800MB RAM used, do you have any tweaking type program running that could be freeing memory?

 

You might find this interesting!
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/speed-up-or-disable-windows-search-indexing-in-vista/
PS I use Search EveryThing! I love this free software. This is not a resource hog.
http://www.voidtools.com/

 

I have not created a new acct yet. And once upon a time I had my system oc'd to about 3.25 ghz but have went back to stock settings. This has only just started happening I would say within the last month.

 

That's supposed to run only when nothing else is running, basically at idle. That's my interpretation of it.

 

Exactly Augie, thread title = Memory is maxing out at idle!


@ C1B3R5NYP3R: straight answer: if you don't want your memory to be hogged at idle, turn off Windows Search or learn how to control it.

What your lag increasing over time problem is we don't yet know, deal with this first then we can see what else is happening.

 

*here here* *thumbs up*
i agree

 

Ouch!

Turned it off or at least unchecked all boxes. Memory is still running at a little over a gig at idle but I will see how it handles over the next day or so.


Thanks to all for all the help.

 

W7 likes to live in a lot of RAM as opposed to XP which most of was left on HDD, W7 likes to use the memory that you have for quicker response. You're actually in the normal range. Mind you, none of that means anything for your issue.

 

Ok so I finally got around to creating a second user account. Its also running at about 1.20 gb. Hopefully this was my problem. And as usual I made a mountain out of a mole hill! Lol

 

It's ok,

Many of us 'over think' at times

Do you want to try to get some insight into:

the lag problems next?

 

I very much doubt W's indexing causes the lag. It's now up to the OP to find the issue with everyone's help.

 

yeah...

I had to restart my computer after turning off windows search. So it probably will take some time to get it to lag again. Provided it wasn't caused by the ram issue.

 

Memtest gave your RAM a clean bill of health, if it had any problems since, there would have been a crash a few hours ago, judging by the peaks shown in your TaskMan Performance tab attachment earlier.

I'm still interested in whatever caused the peaks and troughs, to me, it looks like a RAM 'cleaner' at work.

What 3rd party programs do you have running?

 

I hope the lag comes back soon! This way everything's fresh in mind and we can hopefully eliminate one more thing.

 

Should be back by tomorrow. It usually takes about 12 hrs to come back. Or at least thats how long it took the last time.

As far as actively running programs, I have Norton 2011, Printer pro (for use with Ipad) other than that I dont have any other programs that start up without me starting them. I do have several other programs that I use. Like Itunes, Utorrent, I have recently installed advance disk recovery. (full version) but I dont have anything in start up.

 

This is a candidate for the CPU spikes shown in the Performance tab of TaskMan.

 

i had a similar problem a while ago with the idle. It was caused by the indexer, turned it off and voila!
1.2Gb is normal for win7. if you want to lower it, you can check out "autoruns" (from microsoft, free) that basically works like msconfig. I always turn off the adobe and java pre-loaders and stuff like that.
*EQL*

 

Good call. Damn Norton still screwing us? The PR flack should be here soon to defend the app. Decent person though.

 

Just dug out the following, no idea of who/where the origins or truth of it though:

 

not sure what you mean by 'pulse updates'. If that means it updates it's virus definitions every 15 minutes you can probably change that to once a day or something. Otherwise all antivirus programs now scan everything as you open it.. it's why they are better at catching infected files..
anyway, hopefully the WI tweak will have helped your lag.
*EQL*

 

And another possible culprit:

Past my bedtime, g'night all

 

Norton actually checks every few minutes! It clearly states how much time has passed since the last check.

As for my pc, I am not having issues with the cpu, just memory. Even when memory is maxed my cpu is at nill. I dont use a screen saver, and my tower is set to perfomance. Like in never shutting down with out my command. Monitor is set to shut down after a few hours.

As for today, I came home and turned on my monitor ( 37" tv) and memory was at 1.86gbq. Opened 1 IE window and it jumped to just above 2 gb. Still has not shown any lag that I can tell.

 

Does the Norton check coincide with the spike in RAM usage as shown in your attachment?

Can you post some TaskMan tabs so we can see how it's currently doing?

 

This thread is making me dizzy. Not using CPU. using 50% CPU. Not using excessive Ram, Using excessive RAM.confused-D
Is there really a problem?? I'm confused!

 

Here are the latest. The only thing open att his time is task man and this one IE window, and windows snipping tool.

Not sure I if I can track norton that well.

 

That makes two of us! CPU has never been the problem. Although it has been mentioned in previous posts. This is certainly a memory thing...I think. :-D

Since I turned off windows search and indexer my memory has come down to tolerable levels. Maybe due to updates from M$. Not sure.
My rig is not exactly a new one anymore. Still running DDR2 on an LGA 775 C2Q
Q6600

 

You appear to have a lot of handles open; that's another type of resource that has limits and may cause problems, can you set your Processes tab to add the Handles column and list it with the highest handles at the top please? Then post a fresh attachment?

 

I also done some digging and could not find norton doing anything at the time that the drop in memory occurred. Posted properties of the time I took that pic of task man with the spike and what norton was doing at that time. Either I am looking in the wrong place or Norton was not doing anything at that time.

***Correction: I have norton 360 not 2011***

 

Hmm, one process with 84k handles open isn't really likely to cause any problems but when you compare it to my attachment, I had only 103k handles open across all 29 running processes. Check on that figure every few hours, see if it keeps increasing, if it does, see if you can update your HP software.

That Norton log looks useful to check for problems with processes too, do the other parts of Norton have any different logs that might prove useful to you as a quick check?

It would give us more accurate data if you always set your TaskMan to show processes from all users, too.

 

Ah, I made a little mistake there , my system's running on 10.3k handles (yours was on 103k total earlier).

 

You have AVAST and Norton? I dumped Norton because the downloads I could not stop, slow the computer to a crawl.

Avast is just plain trouble for some people.

 

Already up to 88k on that one alone. Tried running HP update. Says no new updates available. Dont think I need it anyway. As long as I can print, I'm good. I dont need all that bloatware for the printer.

 

Deleted hp printing software. Just kept the drivers needed for printing. Got it down ti 18.5k memory is at 1.20gb.

As for history from norton, I can search out specific things or everything. Well specific to the different areas it covers. As far as being resouce hungry, I dont think its as bad as it used to be a few years ago. But thats just my opinion. I just cant wrap my head around using a free program to protect my computer.

Yall have a good night!

 

Hi!! I know I'm a pain in the rear, but I have been following this thread from day one and I'm still confused . Is the problem solved?? What was hogging resources(RAM)?? Was there a memory leak?? Was there a RAM hog?? Where are we at this time?? Windows Search?? HP ???? Is RAM now being released back into the OS, or is there a program hogging RAM until a reboot is needed to release the RAM?? Even though I have learned a lot, I still have questions!! I know this is not a school for newbies, but this is how I learn