Memory Usage Keeps Getting Larger

[pestocat]

The memory is use keeps getting larger even when nothing is going on. I have
restart every couple days when I run out of memory. I have 1 GB RAM and
running Win XP Pro with all the updates. I have Outlook and IE7 running and
have turned off BitDefender Anti-virus and anti-spam. What could be
happening?

 

[Unknown]

Right click task bar and select 'task manager' to see what is using memory.

 

[Robert Moir]

The memory is use keeps getting larger even when nothing is going on. I
have restart every couple days when I run out of memory. I have 1 GB RAM
and running Win XP Pro with all the updates. I have Outlook and IE7
running and have turned off BitDefender Anti-virus and anti-spam. What
could be happening?

How do you know memory in use is getting larger? What happens when you run
out of memory?

<heavily simplified>
Memory in a computer is not like money in your bank to be invested carefully
and frugally. Memory is there to be used, and in the normal operation most
modern operating systems, the system will attempt to find a use for all the
memory it can find because memory it can't use is memory you wasted money
purchasing. If another process requires more memory then the things
currently using it will be made to give up some for the new process to use.

Memory being used, by itself, isn't a bad thing.

 

[pestocat]

I'm monitoring Task Manager and can watch memory usage with time. When
memory gets to 2.7 GB or so, I get messages that Bitdefender tried to load
something and could not get resources.

 

[Robert Moir]

I'm monitoring Task Manager and can watch memory usage with time. When
memory gets to 2.7 GB or so, I get messages that Bitdefender tried to load
something and could not get resources.

Could be a memory leak. Or... you haven't been listening to those fools that
tell people to turn off their virtual memory page file have you?

Ok, in task manager, click the Processes tab. One of the columns in this
table should be Mem Usage (see next paragraph on how to add columns if it
isn't there). Click on this to sort running processes by memory use, and
click again to bring the high numbers to the top of the list.

Now in the task manager window's menus, open the View menu and select Select
Columns. Tick Memory Usage Delta (this is where you'd also click memory
usage if it didn't appear above). Click OK.

You should now have a list of processes running on your system, sorted by
amount of memory being used, AND you should also be able to see in the Mem
Delta column the 'rate of change' for this memory, numbers in brackets
represent a decrease in mem use, normal numbers represent increase. You're
looking for something that is using a lot of memory and probably shows a
steady increase rate.

 

[pestocat]

I think I found the problem. For the last several days I have been stopping
and/or uninstalling various applications. I stopped WeatherBug, Google
Desktop, BitDefender and still used memory kept getting larger. I re-enabled
the mentioned applications. I also added the "Mem-delta" column and this was
a good suggestion. There was an application that was always adding and
substracting memory. The software is an old Lucent application named
VitalAgent. This is a great tool that shows you network speeds for
down/up-loads plus other tools. I must have downloaded this at least 10
years ago. Well, I uninstalled VitalAgent and the used memory dropped from
1362 MB to 691 MB. This is a small piece of software so it really didn't
need all that memory. I did a Google search on VitalAgent and it looks as if
the software has been updated
http://www.pcnet-online.com/picks/vitalagent.htm I will check this out.