ram usage not dropping after closing programs

seems a bit weird the past few days... heres the story

so, i noticed a few days ago that i was running a bit high on ram usage compared to normal operation after exiting out of programs. its only about 2% more but i can tell the difference when i unplug it and run on battery for extended amounts of time. I usually run 11-12% idle, i am now at 12-13% idle on first startup. it would return to the 11-12% after running programs also. now i am running more and more with increasing programs opened and closed. i run 15-16% after running outlook and chrome with a closure.

cleaned registry using ccleaner, disk cleanup performed, defragged, virus scan done with avast, ran search and destroy with nothing found for spyware and malware

checked all of the processes, applications, and services, nothing seems out of the ordinary but im not really sure what all of them are.

i even went as far as restoring back to over a month ago to see if that made a difference. it didnt seem to help at all. im lost as to what to do with it.

any help or other things to try to check/run to see if theres anything on it.
thanks,
steve

 

Check in Windows Services for SuperFetch, and if its running disable it. Caches applications and if its running will preload regularly used files into memory when you boot into Windows (can even cache game files which is a pain in the ***). No point having this active on a gaming PC.

 

its there, wont let me disable it though any tips?

thanks for your help!
steve

Edit: nevermind lol i got it figured out

thanks again, i will monitor it for a while. Is this a new feature or something? I just noticed this problem.

steve

Edit 2: didnt seem to help, i think windows media is running in the back ground. ill have to see what i can find out.

steve

 

steve, in task manager, what is using all your memory?

 

im not really sure, when i close everything theres not any items in the apps tab, the services tab doesnt have much in it, and the processes one doesnt really have anything good in it either.

it has been going back down to 12% now at least after exiting out of everything. i actually went back in and turned the superfetch back on and it seemed to help lower it a bit again. ill take 12% and 11% idle, when i am at 14-15% after closing everything i start to get irritated.

lol, ill check it again when i exit off of everything and keep you posted,
thanks again guys,
steve

i have an explorer with a description of windows explorer running about 30000K, thats my biggest one besides chrome and outlook when they are open. sidebar runs about 36000. dwm.exe runs 21000. those are the biggest ones on the processes list.

steve

 

Steve, i just did an experiment for you...i closed all my apps and only left the bare essentials like my comodo internet security, Idt etc...my memory usage was 14%. So i don't think you're that far off. Actually i think you're normal.

Windows 7 uses a lot of memory, especially with all the caching that it does. Anyways, what's the point of having all the ram if you aren't gonna use it?

 

thanks for the info!
lol agreed on the ram stuff but it is nice to keep it as low as i can for battery life. I gain quite a bit of battery life with 2% less ram usage for a few hours.

i run 11%-12% ram most of the time, the lowest, which i saw last week was 9% for a few minutes. after that it spiked up and started acting up running quite high compared to what it has ran for months.

i cant believe i run 2gb of ram at idle with 7.
steve

maybe i got a new feature that was just initiated this week with the new update that came through. just not sure what it was that was configured earlier this week. it should have went away with the recovery to last month though. it didnt seem like it did but i might have updated it again shortly after the recovery.

the only thing thats different was silverlight was installed in an update today. i put mw3 and steam on it too. maybe that is what it is, steam shouldnt be running but maybe it initializes in the background after it boots up. i uninstalled silverlight a bit ago.

the whole things seems slightly slower, even initial startup time seems slower than was last week. mw3 seems to be a likely suspect with it. i guess i wont be able to worry about it really even though it seemed to run the same after monitoring it right after the initial install and playing it. It actually ran the lowest i have seen right after playing for a couple of hours on monday.

tomorrows another day,
steve