Vista memory usage on boot...not all Superfetch?

Hello, I feel I am having a somewhat troublesome experience with Vista hogging up loads of resources at boot time. I have disabled the most flashy and annoying pieces of software that normally hog all the memory such as the sidebar and the Aero effects, as well as the indexing features and other things I don't need much. However, my memory usage after booting is at around 55%! I have added two screenshots to this topic of the peformance and processes tab in the task manager. They're in Norwegian but you get the gist of it.



The general idea seems to be that SuperFetch is the baddie here. However, please have a look at above screenshot. The memory usage graph doesn't take into account the cached memory as evident from the "Hurtigbufret (Cached)" value and the "Ledig (Free)" value. Still, my computer is still using half of its memory only running Firefox, Messenger and uTorrent. Have a look at the below screenshot, I really can't see those processes adding up to give me the right amount of memory used.



Would somebody please be so kind as to enlighten me what exactly is going on here? This is very confusing, and seing memory usage (from what I understand, *not* taking into account SuperFetch) at 60% after booting makes me feel my computer could perform better.

 

Bump.

 

First, have a little patience. Bumping is NOT allowed here until a message has been online for 24 hours. Demanding a reply in less than an hour is not appreciated here at all.

Now to your problem. What is wrong with the usage being at 55-60%? Answer: nothing. Vista takes a whole different approach to memory management, in a nutshell "unused memory is wasted memory". It tries to keep as much as it can in memory so things are ready to be used. It of course does keep a certain amount free and all the stuff that IS in memory can be instantly paged out should the need arise for more memory by some process. Your usage of memory looks just as it should under Vista.

Gary

 

Well that was the standard response I hoped to fend off with my reasoning. The fact is, the screenshot I posted above clearly tells that only 1172MB of ram has been used for the Superfetch cache feature as shown under "Hurtigbufret (Cached)". Below it also says that my amount of free memory ("Ledig") is 0MB. This means that the rest of the two gigs of memory that I have is being used up by regular processes. Is it really normal for Vista to use up close to 1GB memory on pretty much idle work? If so, where is all this memory? It doesn't add up at all with the processes listed in my second screenshot...

Clearly, I must be looking at things wrong here.

Note: Sorry for the bumping, but I was seeing my topic slowly falling off the first page, which is the highway to not getting any replies.

 

No, its not normal...my Vista (with sidebar off,indexing off) runs on 450-550 MB RAM....it hardly touches 1 GB...rarely..
on the other hand i have a classmate who doesnt know anything about computing...his RAM usage is same as yours...You should disable unecessary start-up programs by going to 'msconfig' ...type that in run..

My Cached also remains close to 800-900 MB

BTW your aero & sidebar remains off right?

 

I usually start off with 800 MB with a few programs open when Vista starts up. Weird.

 

The reason for the discrepancy between what the process list reports (something like 250-300MB used total) and the 1GB actually in use is that the process list only shows usermode processes. That is, applications that run outside of the OS itself. Vista itself can use as much memory as it likes for internal stuff, without it showing up on the process list.

As for where your memory is going? Hard to say without more information. What kind of computer is this running on?
Is Vista up to date with hotfixes and updates?

My guess would be that something in your hardware setup requires Vista to allocate a big chunk of memory internally. It's also possible that Vista would free up some of this memory again in low memory situations.

Withough getting into the superfetch debate, no. Having more free RAM won't make your computer perform better. It's only if so much RAM is needed that it has to page data out that you'll see a performance difference. As long as that isn't the case, you'll get the exact same performance whether you have 2, 200 or 2000MB of RAM free.

 

Here is the real question. Does you use your computer to do stuff (documents, email, pictures, surfing, checkbook....etc) or did you buy a PC to look at task manager?

When you click on your web browser does it open up and perform the function it needs to perform?

Vista is a new OS....and it uses memory way different than XP. Just except that. Or switch to ubuntu and join the MS bashing crowd because its above your head.

Sorry but so many of the same BS statements about Vista being a memory HOG....when its really OENTF.....Operator...Error.....No.....Trouble.....Found.

 

Dude that's normal, mine takes upto 1.2GB of ram immediately after start up. But that goes down to 500-600 MB in seconds.

 

So the problem with games crashing on Vista because they ran out of memory didn't exist at all then?
Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to brush off questions about Vista's memory usage, especially not when the OP actually *does* know about superfetch and the other common answers.

Vista has had plenty of problems with memory usage. Some of them have been fixed through updates, some may not have been discovered yet.

Unless you can explain *exactly* how Vista's memory management algorithms work, I think it's fair to ask about the memory usage you see.

 

Try uninstalling uncessary programs and cleaning up unecessary startup programs. Also are you sure thats startup? For example why is firefox listed under processes? Otherwise from what I can make out you have alot of unecessary background programs running.

Use this guide which should help you immensely.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787