At idle, no apps running: RAM usage = 851MB

[notaguru]

This is a Core Duo Dell, with 2GB RAM and Vista Home Premium.

The Task Manager says nothing unusual is running in Services,
and no Apps at all.

However, RAM usage at idle is oscillating around 851MB.

When I load Firefox and Thunderbird, usage goes up only slightly.

This is a slow computer that seems to run out of resources.

What's going on?

 

[Buellpilot]

What use is RAM if it is empty....?

Vista takes this approach and preloads into memory what it thinks you
are about to ask it to do... this will in theroy speed things up as if
you always load firefox shortly after bootup... it will in fact already
be loaded and therefore it will appear to have started quicker.

Of course if you do something totally different Vista can clear out
the stuff it has loaded into memory and load what you have requested
instead. Over time it gets better at guessing what you are likely to do.

This is why Vista can show a very high memory usage but is that a
bad thing... afterall do you drive around in your car with the fuel
tank nearly empty just so that you can keep all that empty space
in the tank for when you are about to go on a long journey and
need to fill it up...?

 

[Dale White]

Seeing that it's a Dell, I have to ask, if you tried removing alot of the
Not so Valuable "Value Added" software ? I recently worked on an HP box that
came with "extra stuff" that equated to 58 total processes, which in turned
made Vista behave a little more sluggish. I removed most of the programs and
got it down to about 45 processes.

It's kind of hit or miss what you will like or not like, so I can't tell you
if you need the Quicktime quicktask running. But if you go to msconfig and
go to the startup section, you can uncheck alot of those boxes and see what
the effect is.

851MB is a little high, and I disagree with the concept that it's a good
thing that Vista loads everything and the kitchen sink in the chance you
"might" use it. My normal idle sytstem usage is around 500-550MB, but I run
a fairly cleaned up\minimal config. It's pretty much a given that Vista is
going to use double the memory as XP, so doesn't be surprised if after all
your house keeping, you are still around 650-700.

One question, what makes you think it's running out of resources ? 851MB is
a long ways away from 2GB (unless you're a gamer, then it's a hop skip and a
jump) I'm going to guess it's the background process that dell added that's
probably given it a "slow feel"

 

[Tiberius]

the transfer of ANY data into RAM needs CPU power, disk thrashing and of
course that translates into time.
By filling up the ram you are doing just that. Empty ram is sitting there
usless.. yes.. but ram filled with bloat is worse!

Superfetch and prefetch try to combat bloat by moving parts of bloated
software into the ram...

If you have ever actually seen prefetch in XP you will find out that it
prefetches things you have not used in a looong time.

Superfetch claims to learn.... yeah right... we know how intelligent
computers are!

Then when you load Photoshop for example with a high res image, it flushes
that ram to make room for the image to load in the memory,
then it loads the ram again with crap....

NO NO NO NO!!!! The result is a bloat mess .... I believe that all apps must
load, and unload totally from memory, be lean compact,
swift. The use of ram that way is an insult and abuse... its a storage tank
for blubber fat of badly written and thought out programs,
with number one FATSO vista itself...

Think of this as if your belly was so fat that you needed a wheelbarrow to
carry it.. the wheelbarrow is superfetch! Thats the MS sollution,
the wheelbarrow and not triming down that blubber.

Vista itself is the monster that starts all these problems in the first
place by caching its own fat on ram.

And MS seems to have forgotten the concept of resources... the more stuff
you have loaded, services, threads working, stuff uploaded in ram
the more sluggish the computer becomes.... thats why XP is so faster than
Vista....

This caching of stuff from vista should at least give more control to the
user. For example I have seen similar programs that date over
a decade old (yeah you actually thought superfetch was an MS innovation?
lol) that let you define such a cache per application,

that way if you wanted to give an extra boost to mozilla firefox and not on
word then you could. Because you might use Firefox 100 times a day
while word only ONCE a day. keeping Word in ram is stupid if you dont use
it..

Generally these superfetch and indexing features of vista are good for
people tht dont fool around with their computers much... that use the same
applications
again and again.. that dont shift around all the data daily.... Grannies
and Granpa vista users come into my mind!!!
Computers can learn from them since they dont shift things around all the
time... but people of the new era of technology do.. and vista cant keep up
with the changes.

A power user like me turns off these horrid superfetch and indexing services
AT ONCE.

 

[notaguru]

No gaming - strictly business.

How can I kill "Superfetch", or whatever?

And the CPU sits at virtually zero while RAM is nearly half
used. I must wonder what's in there...

All the pre-installed junk has been removed, all Processes that
are known junkware are gone.

Please try to help me figure this out.

When typing in MSWord, out of nowhere I'll get that blue
spinning circle and have to wait for 30 seconds. It's a killer!

 

[Dale White]

Go to Control Panel, Administrator Tools, Services.

You'll see Superfetch down a bit.

Some services you can try stopping to see if it makes any difference is
Readyboost, TabletPC, Windows Search, Windows Defender.

I'm guessing it might actually be Windows Search.indexing you hard drive
that's causing the delays. I've only typed a few docs in Word, so I can't
say that I've seen the problem you are describing.

Also, I'd suggest just stopping these services, but leave them set to
automatic. That way, if you want them back on, you can just reboot. If you
find a service that is overly annoying, then you can set it to disabled or
manual.

 

[Jim]

No gaming - strictly business.

How can I kill "Superfetch", or whatever?

And the CPU sits at virtually zero while RAM is nearly half used. I must
wonder what's in there...

All the pre-installed junk has been removed, all Processes that are known
junkware are gone.

Please try to help me figure this out.

When typing in MSWord, out of nowhere I'll get that blue spinning circle
and have to wait for 30 seconds. It's a killer!

MSWord saves everything to a backup file every now and then in case
you have a crash. This example seems to me to be a disk drive problem.
What are the disk specs?
Jim

 

[notaguru]

MSWord saves everything to a backup file every now and then in case
you have a crash. This example seems to me to be a disk drive problem.
What are the disk specs?
Jim

Hmmm.... maybe.

It's 120GB 5400rpm, about 20% full, just defragmented.

Also, just disabled Superfetch and rechecked to see if there's
any accumulated junk or spyware - no.

 

[Steve Thackery]

How can I kill "Superfetch", or whatever?

And the CPU sits at virtually zero while RAM is nearly half used. I must
wonder what's in there...

Please try to help me figure this out.

Notaguru, you aren't listening to the advice you've been given. There is
nothing to "figure out". Vista DELIBERATELY fills your RAM with files it
thinks you might want to access next. Don't kill Superfetch, it is speeding
up your computer by not waiting until you click an icon before loading the
file into memory.

Vista releases the RAM instantly if it is needed by another process.

When typing in MSWord, out of nowhere I'll get that blue spinning circle
and have to wait for 30 seconds. It's a killer!

30s (really that long???) is unacceptable, but it has nothing to do with
Superfetch. Something else is wasting time or resources. You have a
bottleneck somewhere, and need to track it down. You'll need to approach
this with an open mind, rather than deciding in advance it's due to
Superfetch and high RAM usage.

Steve

 

[Richard Urban]

A 5400 RPM drive, by today's standards, is a bottle neck.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[notaguru]

Notaguru, you aren't listening to the advice you've been given. There is
nothing to "figure out". Vista DELIBERATELY fills your RAM with files it
thinks you might want to access next. Don't kill Superfetch, it is speeding
up your computer by not waiting until you click an icon before loading the
file into memory.

Vista releases the RAM instantly if it is needed by another process.


30s (really that long???) is unacceptable, but it has nothing to do with
Superfetch. Something else is wasting time or resources. You have a
bottleneck somewhere, and need to track it down. You'll need to approach
this with an open mind, rather than deciding in advance it's due to
Superfetch and high RAM usage.

Steve

Thanks, Steve, but reading in sequence I *did* pay attention and
do understand. However, one opinion was that Superfetch is
contributing to the problem, that one power user turns it off. I
disabled it and the problem persisted, so it's back on.

That blue circle spins for 10-40 seconds (on the clock). Really.
I know it's not system resources, because I can load another app
and all seems normal - then go back to MSWord and it's still
spinning. For the first time, I saw it in a non-Word situation
(Firefox). I would guess it was 15-20 seconds before I could
move on.

In a few days I'll have the option of installing Office 2007
and/or Vista Business - either of which might solve the problem.
Or not, if it's something nasty lurking behind the OS soaking up
time.

Nothing odd shows up in Processes - where to look now?

 

[R. McCarty]

Anytime the PC acts in an abnormal way, it's a good idea to check
the Event logs. Often overlooked - they contain helpful information
on what is happening on the machine. Good to check both the App
and System logs and scan for Errors and Warnings.
EventVwr.Msc [Enter]

 

[Stephan Rose]

What use is RAM if it is empty....?

Vista takes this approach and preloads into memory what it thinks you
are about to ask it to do... this will in theroy speed things up as if
you always load firefox shortly after bootup... it will in fact already
be loaded and therefore it will appear to have started quicker.

Quite correctly said. In Theory.

It would make more sense if Vista maintained the apps that the user last
used in memory rather than trying to preload what it THINKS the user might
use. This type of cache is far more efficient than a pre-loading cache as
it only contains data the user just recently used. So if the user needs it
again, it doesn't need to be loaded again. It does not incur a performance
penalty for loading unecessary data.

The time that can possibly be saved by this is now offset by the time that
needs to be spent loading a whole bunch of junk the user won't use just so
the ONE thing the user will use is already loaded.

If Vista pre loads a few hundred megs worth of stuff into memory then you do
have to consider it has to load this from somewhere. It takes time to do
this. It does not matter if the time is spent at boot up or when the user
stars the app. It *has* to happen at some point in time! You don't get
anything for free in the software or hardware world. It is always a
question of Speed VS Memory Usage. You can rarely improve one without
degrading the other.

These are the types of considerations and problems I deal with on a daily
basis writing software, particularly with more complex problems. What do I
pre-generate? What do I generate at runtime on the fly? What is my memory
cost VS speed as a result? All questions I answer constantly, and questions
I don't see answered all that correctly by preloading too much junk into a
cache.

If I can make the users experience 3 seconds faster but in return need 1
minute longer to start up before the user can even do anything then I have
done nothing to benefit the user.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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[Rock]

Quite correctly said. In Theory.

It would make more sense if Vista maintained the apps that the user last
used in memory rather than trying to preload what it THINKS the user might
use. This type of cache is far more efficient than a pre-loading cache as
it only contains data the user just recently used. So if the user needs it
again, it doesn't need to be loaded again. It does not incur a performance
penalty for loading unecessary data.

It does. That's what superfetch does.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/03/VistaKernel/

 

[Jim]

Hmmm.... maybe.

It's 120GB 5400rpm, about 20% full, just defragmented.

Also, just disabled Superfetch and rechecked to see if there's any
accumulated junk or spyware - no.

A 7200 rpm disk will improve the performance. In addition, one with a big
cache
will run lots better.
Jim