Gaming Vista keeps using up more and more ram?!

[da_head]

before when doing normal tasks (such as surfing the web and using msn), my comp would use around 1.4gb of ram. but nowadays, its been slowly climbing and climbing, and it uses almost 2gb now! the fan seems to run high for menial tasks, and things seem a bit more sluggish. i haven't made any major software/hardware changes recently, and i'm pretty sure it isn't a virus (though it might be), and i checked task manager, and there doesn't appear to be anything in particular that's whoring out the ram. restarting the computer sets it back to usual for a bit, but then it climbs back up later. any thoughts? thanks in advance.

 

[Skyline969]

How long after you restart your computer does it start to climb again? Also, try using msconfig (click start, type msconfig, hit enter) to disable a few things from starting up with your computer. You wouldn't believe how many things start up that don't need to.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to run a full system scan. Avast's boot-time scan is one of the best decisions as it scans your computer before Windows loads, making some viruses that hide themselves become vulnerable.

 

[iritegood]

Open up the task manager (ctrl+alt+del) and check your processes. You can order the processes by the amount of RAM they are using. See which ones are using up your resources the most. The program is usually identifiable by the name, but if not, a simple google search will show you what's hogging the RAM.

 

[da_head]

@skyline969: i'll check later how long it takes to climb. i am familiar with msconfig, and as soon as i got vista, i quickly proceeded to rape fix it by disabling a lot of shit, so that's not the issue at hand. luckily, i have avast pro, and i'll try the boot-time scan as you suggested.

@iritegood: i said i already checked task manager...

 

[Skyline969]

You know how to schedule the boot-time scan, yeah? Open the avast main window, click the little eject-looking button, click Schedule Boot-Time Scan, and hit Schedule. Bam. Reboot your computer and let it go. Don't do what my brother did and forget to plug in your computer if it's a laptop. I'm kinda glad Dell gave him a Recovery partition.

 

[da_head]

plug it in? did it lose power mid-scan or something?
(yes i have a laptop)

 

[cornaljoe]

It's a so called "feature" of Vista. If you have alot (3GB or more), it copies data to the ram for faster access. This feature also puts less stress on your harddrive. I didn't like it either but I've gotten used to it. I have 4GB and my PC is using 2.4GB of it.

 

[da_head]

@cornaljoe: really? how come it just started doing this recently? and how come my other friends with vista aren't experiencing this? :S

EDIT: fuck. apparently the boot scan doesn't work with x64 systems

 

[Skyline969]

plug it in? did it lose power mid-scan or something?
(yes i have a laptop)

Yeah, he lost power. Stupid bastard didn't realize his power bar wasn't switched on.

And your system is x64? Damn... well, running a deep system scan (high sensitivity, scan in archive files too) will spot out most of the viruses.

 

[Joe88]

it cache's commonly used programs like firefox for example to the ram for faster loading

 

[Skyline969]

da_head, how large is your laptop's pagefile? Bump that baby up to 6-10 gigs or so. Maybe that'll help.

 

[da_head]

da_head, how large is your laptop's pagefile? Bump that baby up to 6-10 gigs or so. Maybe that'll help.

i already have it set to 8gb. should i increase it?

 

[Skyline969]

Nah, 8 gigs should be plenty. Hm... well, just get back to me on how long it takes before your laptop slows to a crawl and we'll figure something out from there.

Another thought, what CPU does your laptop have?

 

[playallday]

He has a 2.00GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5800.

 

[da_head]

He has a 2.00GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5800.

yep that's correct. currently its using 2.11 gb of ram, and things get a bit choppy sumtimes (like typing this for instance) and i've noticed when streaming videos the video freezes every 20 secs or so for an instant.

 

[da_head]

wow wtf! its now using 2.4gb of ram! and the computer is pretty sluggish >.>

i have 4gbs in total btw

EDIT: yeah i just restarted it, and its back at 1.4gb (normal-ish) range.

 

[Skyline969]

Looks like a reboot is all you need. However, that could get annoying to do all the time.

As a plus, I'm using Windows 7 and my laptop is using less than a gig of RAM. I currently have open a download accelerator, Firefox, Windows Media Player, Ares (a smaller version of Limewire), Windows Live Mail, AND Windows Live Messenger, along with my antivirus. I love Windows 7!

 

[Joe88]

my vista ultimate is using about 950MB right now
FF, ATI CCC, Zone Alarm Security Suite, Windows Defender, uTorrent, Peer Gurdian 2, HD Audio Manager, PowerISO

 

[DeMoN]

For me, it's always this damn svchost.exe that uses up the most RAM, up to 150k. You might be in a similar situation, but you can't disable it.
The other thing is Firefox. Sometimes I open up so many tabs and that increasingly takes up a lot of RAM too.

 

[da_head]

it mite be firefox, it is a ram whore afterall. and yeah i do have windows 7 ultimate RC on this rig, but haven't had time to move all my shit over. guess i'll do that soon and ditch this shit for good.

last time i tried out windows 7, it was using like 700mb of ram with aero enabled =D sexyyy