Modern Windows 7 wanting 4 gigs of RAM.

[FAST6191]

Tthis last few months it seems many windows 7 X64 installs I take care of, regardless of AV, time since install and other such things always seem to want 4 gigs of RAM to run well, maybe 3 in a pinch but definitely not 2.

Normally I would just play with task manager, some kind of machine fixing program and tasklist /svc ( https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491010.aspx ) to find the culprit. However the first, lying piece of junk that it normally is, gmer, a2 hijack free and tasklist reveal nothing and say the RAM is cozy but nowhere near full and playing with the swap file. An exploratory nuking of the usual suspects (mainly windows update related) gains me very little either.

For most purposes this is fine and for desktops where I can bung 4 1 gig sticks in (thank you CEX for flogging them off at a couple of quid a pop) then I do not mind much at all, however laptop DDR2 is getting quite expensive for what it is (though I have seen the whole "new ram released, old ram gets legacy device prices" dance several times now so I probably should have stocked more. Probably should also do DDR3 at this point as well) and that gets annoying -- my Linux installs all seem to do OK with libreoffice and firefox with the same usage patterns and I should not really have to be doing this for basic office machines sporting mid range core2s and 2 gigs of RAM.

Have I missed anything or do I go RAM scrounging?

 

[migles]

are you sure you are using a good rip?
i am using windows 7 x86 i have 4gb of ram, and with firefox with some extentions skype av, and windows update running, on task manager got exactly 1 gb busy... (usable 3.25)

i know x64 takes more ram, but shouldn't be the whole 4gb..

are you using a integrated GPU that is reserving a lot of ram for VRAM?

maybe since its a new install, its just windows update wasting all the ram, i recently installed windows 7 (it was a early iso, with no SP1) on my friend pc, and noticed the ram was 80% busy, but windows update was downloading about 200 updates... and after having the pc with everything ready, ram in iddle was 1-2gb busy... (he also had 4, but i made him get a new ram stick just to be sure)

 

[FAST6191]

It was various installs, ones I have done from my downloaded media both in recent times and in years past, ones that had been installed by OEMs and ones I had not touched before the day it was set in front of me, the whole range from pro to ultimate, for all sorts of laptops, towers and hardware combos (shared GPU RAM and otherwise).

Task manager, especially newer versions, lies badly and also says it is not using a lot. However the more accurate programs also say all is good. The fact remains that adding more RAM, even though in a couple of cases I actually ended up dropping the RAM speed, instantly sped everything up. Normally it is Windows update if not slowing things down then using enough resources that starting something sends it over the limit but in this case it seemed fine.

Requirements do increase as time goes on (end of XP would not run on what it an original install would have) but this seemed all at once and not really with any great reason.

 

[Flame]

maybe you should wait for windows 10 and see if that help..

or move to Linux once and for all.

if not its maybe time to get a new setup if this is really old and maybe dying on you.

 

[Hecatia]

There is a huge memory leak in something related to updating.

I reinstalled 7x64 on a laptop recently and it used the usual amount of ram but when I connect it to the internet to update it used the whole 4GB slowing the laptop down to a crawl and it only settled down when updating was done.

 

[GreatCrippler]

I just keep it simple when doing Win 7 builds. 3 Gigs or less X86. More than 3 X64. You can do 64 bit on less. I have just never noticed it doing all that well on systems running around 2gb.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Thanks to finding out about this at work, there is actually an issue in Windows 7 right now where svchost started by SYSTEM will wind up having a huge memory leak on some systems (I've seen it taking up 1.2GB of RAM on one of our laptops) due to something in the Windows Update cache. Check this out: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-...ost-exe-netsvcs-draining-all-my-memory-2.html

Edit - even on 4GB at work out Windows 7 rigs run like a pile of shit.

 

[loco365]

I've actually noticed huge memory consumption on the family desktop with Windows 7. It's 32-bit and runs with 2GB of RAM perfectly fine, and it sits at 1GB when idle, however, when Google Chrome starts, the computer grinds to a halt. Watching the task manager showed that Chrome was, quite literally, using what remaining memory the computer had. I know it's a memory leak, but I'm not sure where it is .-. My own laptop, with three tabs open and 5 extensions only uses about 200MB of RAM, although I'm on Windows 8.1 with 8GB of RAM, but still. I'm considering uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome, but that is going to have its own issues, like my mother losing all her saved passwords, bookmarks, and whatnot, and she'll probably bitch me out on that :x

 

[Sicklyboy]

@Team Fail not if she has them associated with a Google account.

I carry my bookmarks and user/passes between my home computer and any of my work laptops because of this thank god.

 

[loco365]

@Sicklyboy I'm not entirely sure if she does, but I really hope that she does. If that's the case, all that she'll lose is all the sites that are auto-signed in for her (Facebook, Yahoo Mail, other sessions, etc etc). Otherwise I can just make a burner email to preserve them. She's not very computer literate, so if she can't get it working in the usual amount of clicks she flips shit at me. :x

 

[Nathan Drake]

@Sicklyboy I'm not entirely sure if she does, but I really hope that she does. If that's the case, all that she'll lose is all the sites that are auto-signed in for her (Facebook, Yahoo Mail, other sessions, etc etc). Otherwise I can just make a burner email to preserve them. She's not very computer literate, so if she can't get it working in the usual amount of clicks she flips shit at me. :x

You should be able to check the Chrome settings to see what Google account everything is associated with.