Memory Usage Rises with time

[Steve F]

I have a new Widnows XP Media 5 computer with 1GB of RAM. Over time,
the amount of memory used by the computer as reported in the Windows
Task Manager rises. When first booting it is about 250 MB. With no
programs running is slowly climbes to about 300. After several hours
with programs running (Win Explorer, Inet Explorer, Word, Excel) the
usage continues to climb until, with all programs closed, it is over
400 MB.

Any ideas why it keeps climbing? What services should I shut off to
stop this?
Thanks
Steve

 

[Guest]

try scan for spyware

 

[Steve F]

Only 6 files were removed when scanning for spyware. That is not the
problem. Any other ideas for what consumes memory?
Thanks

 

[Guest]

there are lots of progs that hog resources tkbell is one if you have
realplayer you don't need them on your start menu,what you need is a start up
manager let's you know what is starting up or go to
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm to find what is
running also search google put in start up xp

 

[frodo]

Only 6 files were removed when scanning for spyware. That is not the
problem. Any other ideas for what consumes memory?
Thanks

1) SIX spyware items? You havn't been very careful, have you?

2) It's perfectly normal for the amount of memory in-use to go up over
time, it's being used for the file-system cache (and other normal OS
things). That's a good thing. What, you want all that 1GB of RAM doing
nothing for you? Let it be...

 

[Ron Martell]

I have a new Widnows XP Media 5 computer with 1GB of RAM. Over time,
the amount of memory used by the computer as reported in the Windows
Task Manager rises. When first booting it is about 250 MB. With no
programs running is slowly climbes to about 300. After several hours
with programs running (Win Explorer, Inet Explorer, Word, Excel) the
usage continues to climb until, with all programs closed, it is over
400 MB.

Any ideas why it keeps climbing? What services should I shut off to
stop this?
Thanks
Steve

Memory exists to be used and Windows by design will always attempt to
find some use, anything whatever that might conceivably be of some
benefit, for every bit of the installed RAM rather than just letting
the RAM sit there idly going to rot.

And just as soon as some better use comes along for some of that RAM
then Windows will instanteously drop the more trivial usages so as to
free up the amount of RAM that is required.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a new Widnows XP Media 5 computer with 1GB of RAM. Over time,
the amount of memory used by the computer as reported in the Windows
Task Manager rises. When first booting it is about 250 MB. With no
programs running is slowly climbes to about 300. After several hours
with programs running (Win Explorer, Inet Explorer, Word, Excel) the
usage continues to climb until, with all programs closed, it is over
400 MB.

XP attempts to keep *all* of RAM in use - however trivially - at all
times. Measures like Task Manager's 'available Physical memory' are
misleading; it should be 'RAM for which there currently no conceivable
use'.

All you are seeing is more *possible* uses arising - eg caching old
files or code after program exit, just in case it is wanted,

Trivial uses will be dropped instantly when a real use arises. Read
more at www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm - especially in How big a page
file, to see if more RAM *could* have benefit in *your* work load

 

[tmt]

It also depends on how long you run your machine. You can include a
small batchfile which will automatically give the machine a restart at
say 3am in the morning when you are sleeping. This will effectively
flush your memory so that it is ready to run again. Don't worry about
the excess memory usage. Especially with 1GB. Your system probably
hums as it is. If you really want to become anal retentive about it
then you can become a program NAZI and what I mean by that is you know
every program and what it does in your add-remove programs list and
keep that list small. The less programs you have installed the easier
it is to troubleshoot, the faster the system is to run and for you to
manage. this way you always know what is starting up at the xp
startup, what is running in the background, etc. The goal is never to
have to use your HDD for virtual memory which will slow your system to
a crawl. Seriously, it will be worse than mollases going up hill in
the winter - especially if you have a multimedia box.

Basically unless you are a serious user and need every ounce of
perfromance, a good rule of thumb is have way more memory than you will
need. This will slow down the time it takes for your system to become
bloated and slow down because most of the modern programs will try to
update themselves or at least ask you if you want to update the
software, and a consequence of this will be larger software for your
system to work with. In plain english, insteadof your system slowing
down a year after purchase it may be 2 or three years after purchase.

Hope some of the info helps. Don't worry about the memory kreep, it'
comes with the territory when you run a windows OS.

Oh for that program that does the auto restart, open up notepad and
then type this:

"Shutdown -f -r"

After that save the file as whatever you want, eg. "forcerestart.bat"
and then save it in your %winnt\system32% folder. Then open up your
scheduled tasks applet somewhere in accessories and setup a new task to
run at 3am and have it point to the batchfile you just made. If you
leaveyour machine running all night then just close any programs with
stuff you were running and then leave it be. at 3am it will restart
and be fresh for you in the morning.

It's not necessary if you turn your computer off at night butif you run
it like a server that is a must.

Hope all this helps,

Later,