High Memory use

[Bob Hansen]

Hi Group
I'm having a problem with a Dell Inspiron 1500 laptop with Vista home basic.
.. It has only 1 gig of Memory. Memory use runs about 850-900 full all the
time with no programs open. I've trimmed "services" and unchecked all but
vital stuff in system configuration. Task manager-processes shows just the
very basic stuff running. I'm at a loss to understand what this machine is
doing with 90% if it's ram with little or nothing running.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Bob Hansen

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Bob.

Most users who worry about high memory usage are worrying needlessly. As
many programmers say, "Unused memory is wasted memory." The only time to
worry about running out of memory is if you try to run an additional program
and get an Out Of Memory error - and it has been years since I've seen one
of those. ;<)

Windows Vista is smart enough in its use of memory to "swap out" current
pages to disk (to the paging file, or "swap file") when it needs RAM space,
and then to swap those pages back to RAM as needed. It does all this behind
the scenes and we seldom realize that this is happening.

Even with no current foreground programs running, Windows can be quite busy
with housekeeping chores in the background, such as Indexing or defragging.
These background programs release their memory immediately when a foreground
app needs that memory.

Are you actually having a low-memory problem? Or are you just worried that
you MIGHT encounter such a problem?

I'm an accountant, not a computer techie. But if you need a more-definitive
explanation, I'm sure several others here can supply one.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[Bob Hansen]

Thank you for your reply, RC. It may be that things are OK. More ram to
start out with would have helped.
Bob