Memory Usage always at around 40%

Hi All,

Wondering if you'd be able to recommend a listing of essential services necessary for Windows 7 and Lenovo's tools. I have a T410 with i620 and 4GB of RAM and I'm constantly running around 40-45% memory usage and with no programs running I'm running around 35% memory usage. When I check task manager, I somehow have 105 processes running?! I've probably installed about 15 programs and that's it.

So a link of essentials would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Well, you definitely have too many processes running, but give it some time and hopefully your memory utilization will go above 75 percent! In fact, my memory usage is often between 75 and ~100 percent! Finally Microsoft created an operating system that knows how to use RAM effectively!

 

use Task manager to determine which processes consume most RAM. Try to uncheck all start-up load programs to see any differences.

you must be joking!

 

Not at all! If I bought an 8-cylinder car only to find out it’d never use more than 4 cylinders, I’d be pretty pissed!

 

imagine when you load a massive program, which need much of RAM. What will your Windows do? It will force other programs to use pagefile, which is much slower than RAM. That will slow down your computer terribly.

My Windows run at 50% RAM at average. When Windows needs, it simply allocates some free RAM.

 

For the most part, WRONG! That was Windows of yesteryear! Modern Windows uses extra RAM as cache to speed up common tasks! When a program needs RAM, Windows quickly empties this cache and gives the program what it needs!

I feel a bit sorry for you! I don’t know what you did to break your copy of Windows, but you’re only effectively using half the RAM you paid for!

 

tell me, emptying the cache and then allocating some RAM is quicker or just allocating some free RAM is quicker?

I did not break my Windows installation. It's been that since I installed it, and will always be that. And I believe that everyone here got the same Windows.

 

Emptying the cache takes less time than it takes you to blink! Long time huh? The plus side for this lengthy time you rarely spend on waiting for the cache to empty is directly translated to all the programs you use often starting almost instantly!

I recommend you call Microsoft for support! Your copy of Windows, somehow, “got broke!”

 

why not you call Microsoft for support and see what's wrong here, your or my Windows? I'm pretty sure that everything's OK for me, including my "copy of Windows"

 

Tell you what. Go Google “SuperFetch”—and when you’re done reading the 200000 relevant pages, you can tell me who’s Windows is working properly…

 

@vimq1987: open your task manager, go to performance tab and tell us what does it say in the "Physical Memory" information group.

 

OK, I was wrong. Sorry for arguing this.

 

People with advanced/moderate computer skills complete the following 4 steps after the fresh install of Windows 7.

1) Turn OFF "System Restore"
2) Turn of Windows Paging. (You do not need paging unless you top your RAM capacity)
3) Disable Windows Defender and Security Center.(Install 3rd party Firewall. e.g. Outpost)
4) Disable UAC

/restart

Ahh... There!

I guarantee your system will run significantly smoother and with less hard drive activity.

 

People who are delusional/think they have advanced/moderate computer skills complete the following four steps after a fresh install of Windows 7:

Until you really know what you’re doing, don’t make random changes to your machine based on something that someone spewed in some forum. I guarantee your system will run with significantly less security issues and related problems and you’ll be able to recover quickly in the event almost anything should go awry.

System restore allows one to very quickly and easily recover from hundreds of things that can go wrong on your system. If you ever do you use all the RAM on your machine, the paging file will keep your computer from crashing—and no one has published any report that shows disable the paging file produces any noticeable performance benefit. Windows firewall is probably the best/fastest free firewall out there for Windows. Most of the third-party Windows firewall stuff can actually slow down your system and introduce security flaws since their code is not as heavily audited/regression tested as the one built into Windows is. As for Windows defender, it’s probably one of the best free antimalware tools out there and has little to do with a firewall. UAC is a SIGNIFICANT security feature in Windows that helps one practice security defense in depth by making it easy to use the system with normal user credentials while still being able to readily perform system administrative functions without compromising overall system security.

 

I disable all of those things except Windows Firewall.

System restore is not as well implemented as 3rd party backup and restore programs.

The significance of eliminating pagefile and hiberfile.sys is you free up a couple GB of otherwise unused HDD space, especially useful when you have abundant amounts of ram.

UAC is just straight annoying. I don't need my system to double check with me every time I tell it to do something.

Windows defender doesn't catch nearly as many malware/virus' as even the free ones like Avira and AVG in tests.

Windows firewall is useful. It does it's job and its easy to configure and built in.

I've never had any issues with my computer performance related or otherwise when disabling those features.

I also kill superfetch and don't allow indexing of every damn file on my computer for search.

 

I disagree with all the above steps except possibly #3.

1.- System Restore is actually extremely effective in the event that a moderately effective piece of malware gets onto your system - the Windows 7 version of System Restore is improved, so your success rate is higher than in XP.

2.- I would advise against turning off the paging file. Some applications make use of the paging file even if there is plenty of RAM available, and in my week-long test of keeping the paging file off after upgrading to 4GB of RAM, two different applications gave me out of memory troubles (even though there was plenty of free RAM left).

To spare any troubles, I would suggest what jonlumpkin advised - set the initial size to a small amount, and set a high upper limit.

3.- Usually, when you install another AV/firewall program, Windows will automatically turn these features off anyway.

4.- I honestly don't see why people find UAC so annoying. I was fine with it in Vista, and as it is improved in Windows 7, it's even more transparent. A major benefit of UAC is that it blocks many startup programs that do not have explicit user-granted permission, an invaluable feature that helps prevent your system from being taken over by malware that tries to invoke administrative privileges on boot.

Disabling SuperFetch is not a very good idea either - SuperFetch allows the OS to cache frequently-accessed program files in unused RAM (which is otherwise left empty: essentially wasted). Even on a fast SSD, SuperFetch still yields improved results over disabling SuperFetch (I've tested both cases for quite some time).

Indexing is more a personal preference. I have a very systematic file organization system, so I never use the search feature aside from programs in the Start Menu (which are fast without indexing anyway). Thus, I turned indexing off.

Basically, the bottom line is, if you're not exactly sure what the repercussions of every change you make to your computer are, it's best to leave it stock - Microsoft software engineers know what they're doing.

 

Superfetch is supposed to release unused ram when other programs call for it, but it doesn't a lot of times when I run certain games (FarCry for instance).

Also, I'm sure there is a speed difference between a ram-cached program and calling the program from a conventional HDD; slow vs fast. But the gap is much smaller when you have an SSD; yeah ram is still faster, but launching programs from the SSD is also nearly instantaneous. I don't need superfetch doing anything on my computer for a infinitesimal speed increase.

And prior to TRIM, superfetch wasn't particularly good for SSD's because i (believe) it tried to arrange particular data (for boot speeds, not program access) contiguously on the SSD. It constantly wrote to the same blocks on the SSD throwing off the wear leveling. Lots of websites, OCZ, bit-tech, guru3D and others recommend disabling superfetch on SSD's because the performance benefit is a moot point.

In fact windows 7 is supposed to disable it by default when you have an SSD, but it's spotty and I disable it manually just to be sure. MSDN:

As for backup, I haven't tried System Restore for sometime, I've been disappointed by it in the past. Acronis is literally one touch and works flawlessly every time.

I've never had page faults with the pagefile disabled. But then again I don't run any particularly exotic programs.

And I still believe UAC isn't necessary for users who have common sense. You won't have any unintended startup malware or anything else for that matter if you're just a bit more aware of your system. And the annoyances far outweigh the benefits. Are you sure you want to this, Am I sure I want to that, UAC has detected this, UAC can go to hell.

Microsoft Engineers get a lot of stuff right. A lot of implementation is bad. I trust them enough to buy their OS. But I'll be damned if I just let it "do it's thing" with out knowing what's going on under the hood. They've disappointed too often in the past for me to drink the kool aid so blindly. But to their credit, it's difficult to design an OS that works perfectly for every type of hardware configuration and every type of user the first time.

 

Agree on the UAC part.

For the most part, it makes users running in administrator account (in the most cases) aware of the actions happening in both foreground and background that requires administrative priviledges. These actions are not necessarily triggered by users consciously, for example, some applications asking for updating and some malwares installing after some other applications are hacked.

The problem is this level of actions tend to be too much in Windows. Therefore I guess they add some auto-consent thing in Windows 7 to reduce annoyance. Possibly Linux users can get used to it faster, since it is somewhat similar to Linux' sudo's.

 

Here's a hint for checking how much free memory your really have:

Go into Task Manager, bring up the Performance tab, and you'll see two relevant numbers in the Physical Memory section:

Availalbe, and Free.

The difference between the two (approximately) is the disk cached data. The "Free" number is literally how much RAM is totally not being used right now, but should any apps request more than that amount, Windows can get free up the cached memory space to fulfill the request. So effectively, "Available" is really the amount of free space your apps can work with.

The difference can actually be quite large. Right now my "Available" memory is 6,185 MB whereas my "free" memory is "only" 3,865, a difference of 2,320MB. That's ~2.3GB worth of data that's available in RAM without needing to incur a disk seek/read hit, but can be dumped if the ~3.8GB of unallocated memory isn't sufficient to service my apps.

 

@Mutnat: But there is another one called Cached...

 

Cached memory is the memory that is currently filled with program information by the SuperFetch feature in Windows Vista and 7, so that those programs launch faster when you start them. This memory is immediately let go by Windows if your programs require more RAM, so it's essentially free RAM that's put to some use when you're not utilizing it.

 

Thanks, all. Question though...my 4GB of RAM shows in Task Manager that I have:

Cached 2328
Available 2286
Free 22

So available - free = 2286-22 = 2264 = 2.2GB. Though this seems like I've got a lot of available RAM, I've been having programs like Firefox, Windows Explorer, and media players freeze up on me and it takes up to 1-2 min. for them and my laptop to free up so that I can resume working. This doesn't seem right.

When I look at the processes tab, firefox.exe *32 is at 225 000K (I have about 10-15 add-ons - do these slow down things?). Any ideas how I can free up the memory so I'm not getting this constant freezing?

Cheers.

 

So far I've found this article: Windows 7 Services that can be Safely Set to MANUAL

Here is a list of services that can be safely set to MANUAL:

* Application Experience
* Computer Browser (If your computer is not connected to any network)
* Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (If you don't use Aero theme)
* Diagnostic Policy Service
* Distributed Link Tracking Client
* IP Helper
* Offline Files
* Portable Device Enumerator Service
* Print Spooler (If you don't have Printer)
* Protected Storage
* Remote Registry (Always disable it for Security purposes)
* Secondary Logon
* Security Center
* Server (If your computer is not connected to any network)
* Tablet PC Input Service
* TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
* Themes ( If you use Windows Classic theme)
* Windows Error Reporting Service
* Windows Media Center Service Launcher
* Windows Search (If you don't use Windows Search feature frequently)
* Windows Time (If you don't want to update system tray clock time using Internet)

PS: You can see the details of each service to determine whether you should disable it or not.

Any thoughts?

 

This is true. You should notice that the Cached number is always almost exactly equal to Available minus Free. Good point. Still, my point was that you should refer to the Available number when deciding how much really free space you have.

 

@junkeeroo: You do not want to go mucking around in the Windows services. Disabling "unused" or "unnecessary" services will not free up any RAM, and it doesn't even seem to be your problem here.

Programs "freezing up" can be due to a variety of reasons: malware, program bloat, issues with your Windows install, driver issues, etc.

And yes, the more addons you tack on top of Firefox, the worse it will perform (more RAM usage, longer startup speed, and depending on the addons, possibly reduced performance).

 

Thanks, Midnight Sun.

I've already done the recommended service changes (and kept a record of which in case there's problems) and have experienced no problems so far. But you're right...they didn't help my memory. Seems the big memory hog was Firefox. I've now switched to the lighter Google Chrome and whereas I was running around 45% memory usage with Firefox, I'm now down to 36% with Chrome! I'm gonna keep trying to filter through the 97 processes that I have running.

Cheers.

 

'Advanced' users don't think that having RAM in use is a bad thing.

The fact Windows uses excess RAM for cache is a GOOD THING. Only non-technical users think otherwise.

 

Thoughts? Yea. Half of this is ridiculous. What happens if you want to share files, use a printer, change your theme or whatnot six months from now only to find out you can’t do any of these things because you broke expected functionality? And because you did this six month ago, you forgot about all the ridiculous/near useless changes you made to your system and wound up spending 3+ hours Googling, being frustrated and posting to forums in an effort to restore the expected functionality you need.

Seriously, most of this is bad advice. Unless you’re routinely running up against very high resource utilization, the ~1% speed improvement you’ll gain from recreating Windows in your own alter image will not be noticeable. And if you’re routinely running up against very high resource utilization, then you really should be buying a more performant machine—not finding ways to break your copy of Windows.

 

If the op wants it, I would be happy to give him a program that gives a continuous display of both usage and the amount of physical and virtual adress space the system uses.

Renee

 

thanks renee, binknr and ooxxoo,

ok, me being a novice user, i correlated the freezing up of programs with the high memory usage. as i'm typing now, firefox just froze temporarily twice with a "not responding" message for 5-10 secs. any ideas why this might be happening?

i'm reading:

Processes: 119
CUP usage: 21%
Memory usage: 55%

renee, i'll take you up on the offer! cheers.

...appreciate any more insights.

 

From a stability standpoint, Firefox (coupled with Adobe Flash) is crap. IE8 and Chrome are far more stable. If all your other programs work fine, why do you blame memory utilization for your problems with Firefox?

 

because I'm a newb...by talking with you more experienced folks, i can start to understand what's going on...

 

Am I the only person here to have [34] processes running and memory usage from [660-770 MBs] when logged on to Windows 7? After log on, my laptop is usable after about 5-7 seconds and CPU utilization nearly at 0%. I suppose people don't bother to uninstall all of the bloatware which come standard on most consumer segment laptops.

3rd Party softwares installed:
-- Outpost Firewall (2 processes)
-- Lenovo Battery Management (1 process)
-- Synaptic Driver (1 process)
-- AppleMobileDeviceService (1 process) (Used for syncing ipod)

Those 4 steps I've posted above are my personal choices as I back up my HD to an external HD often. Not only that, but I burned my sensitive documents to DVDs. From my personal experience, downgrading from 2.4 C2D and 7.2.k HD 9800m GS, to C2D 1.3, 5.4k HD and 4500MHD had almost no significant difference for me. Why? Because I don't game nor I run intensive applications, although I do run Adobe applications such as AE, Photoshop and etc... I am an Accountant, so MS Office and QuickBooks are must for me. CPU at 1.3GHz is more than enough.


Best Regards, Leonid M.