Windows not using all available ram?

I have 8GB of ram in my laptop, but no matter what I do, I can never exceed 7GB of memory usage in the task manager. It can't or won't get up to 100% usage. The computer will be running slowly and switching between different windows and programs becomes delayed, but it still won't use the last GB of memory. I know I could use more than 8GB memory total, but the cost would be too steep and I'm not even fully utilizing the 8GB I already have. Any help? Thanks.

 

Do you have PageFile enabled? What GPU do you have? Give us rest of your system might help.

 

Not using all your RAM is a good thing... it is when it is all used that bad things are happening.

Also make sure all 8GB are available, it could be reserved for system use or shared with the GPU.

 

I laught at this

 

I have an Alienware M15x with a Nvidia 8800m GTX. The task manager says there is a total of 8191MB of total ram.

 

What is useable?
My laptop does also report 8159 MB of total RAM, but usable is only 5720 MB.

 

The highest it gets it says 7GB used, 1GB cached, 1GB available, and 5MB free. And the system gets real slow because it is obviously running out of ram, but it never uses the last GB.

 

Sounds like gpu is holding 1GB of system ram. Still to consume all 7GB free is really unusual for most people. What are you doing to use so much RAM?

 

But its not integrated graphics. Just lots of stuff I do concurrently in internet explorer, firefox, photo editing, pdf, open office, and 1 game at a time without quitting the other stuff.

 

disable pagefile and observe
Your system will also become faster

 

Yay! One more that is not PageFile-colic. Welcome to the club!

 

Why would I be - my system is so much faster and more responsive ever since I disabled the pagefile!!

 

I can agree with that! I'm even using my backup laptop with 3GB of RAM without PageFile. It is so much better, less heat, less HDD activity

 

Well I have no heat problems both ways. It just reduces HDD activity which leads to immense speed increase...

This was though not possible with 4GB RAM. Unless you are a light/rookie use and only user one application at a time or a small number of windows opened and no RAM consuming applications - 4GB RAM requires a pagefile - it is simply not enough for multitasking or heavy applications. Upgrading to 6 allowed me to disable the pagefile and my system is noticeably faster as everything is stored in the RAM only

But I would never say that the pagefile is a stupid thing and useless!! It is a great substitute of RAM!! It allows PCs to run practically unlimited number of applications or heavy applications although only limited/insufficient amount of RAM is installed!! It is a great solution indeed!
But nothing in this world is gratis - the price is called "speed" The system is slowed down as the HDD is (over-)loaded and HDD speeds are XX times lower than RAM
By SSD this effect is less noticeable, but still present! RAM is much faster than SSD too

 

I would not say it is useless either. But PageFile enabled put my HDD under more load which did result to higher HDD tempratures and just raised the overall temprature of my laptop. My backup laptop with 3GB RAM and PageFile disabled does it good. However, it is not used for any heavy multitasking or something like that But I agree Every bit of your words

 

To answer Homo habilis question, the Windows kernel decides how memory is allocated and to what processes. But remember, Windows itself needs memory to work with different devices, video cards, etc. Here is a quick mention on how 1GB of memory is reserved by the kernel to do its work - Kernel address space consequences of the /3GB switch - The Old New Thing - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

HTH

 

What are you doing that consumes so much RAM? Windows will never use 100% of available RAM for system apps and resources... ever. To force max RAM usage just turn off the pagefile.

Unfortunately if you need that much RAM then if your system doesn't have four RAM slots then it'd be cheaper to buy a new laptop than buy 8GB DIMMS.

 

That VERY OLD article that talks about the ANCIENT /3Gb boot time switch doesn't really apply with Windows 7 or 64 bit.

It's probably time to start throwing away old, legacy information........

 

Sorry about the age, as indeed, the article is old (but quickest to find w/ a search), but guess what... The info is still relevant.

Don't be sidetracked by the /3GB switch. Instead, focus on this sentence, "All of kernel's bookkeeping needs to fit inside that one gigabyte. Page tables, page directories, bitmaps, video driver apertures." In Win Vista/7, the Windows kernel still reserves space in order to do its own work. There's a lot of the OS needs to track and exchange data with (device drivers, apps, virtual memory, etc.) Remember each release of Windows will use code based from previous versions. They wouldn't want to re-write this portion of Windows because that would mean a complete re-write for hardware I/O, drivers, etc.

One last point, although it is an old article, it is still relevant in today's OSs. While there are more and more 64-bit applications everyday, there are still more 32-bit apps and the corresponding 32-bit baggage - 2GB memory space limit when it is run on the WoW64 subsystem.

Finally, another, but still somewhat dated, post regarding the explanation about the Windows kernel reserving 1GB of RAM.

 

Same here. have pagefile on so off it goes.

 

That 1GB cached is the same as the 1GB available, because it can drop any of that cached RAM to get more available RAM. The 5MB free is how much actually empty, unreserved RAM your system has. So, you're using all of your RAM. And then some. The Windows 1GB/2GB process space and the /3GB is all a red herring, it's a virtually-mapped address space. It doesn't correspond directly to physical RAM usage, and is only applicable to 32bit systems. The VMM is what determines where the actual bits reside, either in physical memory or the pagefile or wherever.

It gets slow because the cached RAM is sent out to page when your system can't hold it in physical RAM, and when it needs that data it has to go to the (relatively) very slow hard drive to retrieve it.

You can use the Performance Monitor application to see how much of your pagefile you're using: RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff

In short, you ARE using all of your memory. You're just reading the monitors wrong.

No, it won't. His programs will start throwing all kinds of "Out of Memory" errors and rather than going slow will simply crash. There are some people who can get away with not using a pagefile. Given what Homo habilis has said about his usage (memory-heavy graphics programs and the like), he's not one of them.

 

Again, posting old XP-specific info and trying to make it fit win7/server 2008. Doesn't even fit Vista/server2003. Or any 64 bit variant.

 

Yeah, riiiiiight.... 'cause because no one runs the 32-bit variants of those OSs and everyone has 64-bit versions of their favorite games/apps so, Wow64 has no bearing on 64-bit versions of win7/server 2008 or Vista/server2003.

In any case, I think Pitabred is on to something as the user space vs. kernel space stuff would apply within a process's total memory space itself, and would have no bearing on what Windows for that last 1GB.

 

With all my respect - you know just as much about his usage as I do - you are just predicting the opposite.

As I've written many times - DON'T decide for your system - let IT decide for itself instead ------> disable pagefile and give it a try!! Turning it back on is just as easy as turning it off - even easier as you will not need to restart!

 

You have written it many times. The problem is that it's not "magic" or any kind of voodoo and the only way to understand the problem being to try it. Given that he's seeing 7GB of actual, current usage with his normal workload, and has said that he's seeing it slow down (which means he's hitting the pagefile pretty hard), he will start seeing instability if he starts another app. That's just how things work. If you fill up your memory space you will get out of memory errors. Some people can work in 6-8GB of memory space. Homo habilis, by all the evidence in this thread, does not. Your unequivocal statement that he will see performance increases by disabling his virtual memory is completely contrary to everything he has said about his usage patterns. He will see crashing apps or other odd behavior when he runs out of space for memory pages.

More reading: http://brandonlive.com/2010/02/21/measuring-memory-usage-in-windows-7/

 

You might very well be right! But again I don't understand why we need to start a poll for that and have a 50 pages discussion where everyone will bet on a different result, instead of just trying it out!? Each of us could paste endless theory, articles, blogs, magazines written by known and unknown authors that will contradict the previous information posted. But the truth is - it is HIGHLY individual and no rule applies to all universally!

It only takes a few clicks and turning the pagefile back on doesn't even require restarting! So again - my advise is for him to explore.

I have never heard of a hand or leg being eaten out by an angry computer just because someone disabled the pagefile... It is harmless to experiment and the most precise and accurate answer will present itself - no matter who is right and who is wrong! Let it be you who's right - at least he will know it for sure.

If I never tried disabling the pagefile I would have never known what a miracle it does to do so when sufficient RAM is present. It might be not the same to him but again - there is ONLY one way to find out...

 

While I agree with your analysis that the OP is most likely hitting the ceiling of his memory, there is no need to treat page file as taboo. Just like what Gracy123 said, disable it and we know the answer within a few hours. The sky will not fall.

BTW, if lack of memory is really the reason for the slow down, SSD seems to be the only solution as a page file on SSD would be significantly faster than one on HDD.

 

Thank you Pitabred. I guess what just had me annoyed was that the memory bar graph in the task manager would never go above 7GB even when it was obvious that things were slowing down.

I've disabled the page file so I guess I'll see what happens sometime within the next few days.