Memory Issue with Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

jkay6969 · Jul 3, 2008

Hi all,

I have a problem with Vista Ultimate x64 SP1, I always seem to lose all my free RAM within an hour regardless of system activity, even while idling.

I have an intel Q6600 @2.4GHz, 8GB DDR2 PC6400 RAM, 2x 500GB Samsung HDD's (RAID0), XFX Geforce 8800GTX XXX Extreme, Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 Mobo.

I have noticed an svchost.eve process runs each time I reboot which seems to bloat constantly although when I close it down it only frees up about 800MB, what's happening to the rest of my 8GB???

When I launch Task Manager it says I'm only using 10% Memory but free RAM sits at 0?!?!

Please can anyone help me?

Best regards and thank you all for your time in this matter.

JKay6969

damocles · Jul 3, 2008

It's the way vista is designed.

It will use all your ram to perform background tasks/load regularly use files and programs.

Free ram is wasted ram.

skunksmash · Jul 3, 2008

damocles said:
It's the way vista is designed.

It will use all your ram to perform background tasks/load regularly use files and programs.

Free ram is wasted ram.

you are right ''free ram is wasted ram'' but it shouldn't be caching 8gb !!!!!!!
with 4gb my rig uses about 2.5gb constantly & that's not turning it off for 2 weeks

does it affect the OS operation.. lag, choppy screens or apps not running correctly due to lac of ram..?

if not i wouldn't worry about it ....vista should release any ram required

Axon · Jul 3, 2008

Don't worry mate, Vista uses all the memory for everything, but when you start something important that needs memory, all the memory will go to that program.

jkay6969 · Jul 4, 2008

Thank you for all the replies,

I must say that, after settling down, Vista seems to run fine without any problems with apps complaining about a lack of memory. I was just concerned that with 8GB of RAM I should have SOME free ;-) lol

It was more than a little disconcerting to see 0 Free RAM without any processes appearing to be using it.

I understand that Free RAM could be seen as wasted resources but I thought that it would leave some free for fast launching of apps. With a 931GB (2x 500GB RAID 0) Hard Drive with a system managed Pagefile, a 4GB Readyboost USB Stick and 8GB of RAM what on earth could it use it all for? I guess only Vista knows ;-) lol

Thank you all again for your informative posts. You have put my mind at ease.

JKay6969

skunksmash · Jul 4, 2008

jkay6969 said:
Thank you for all the replies,

I must say that, after settling down, Vista seems to run fine without any problems with apps complaining about a lack of memory. I was just concerned that with 8GB of RAM I should have SOME free ;-) lol

It was more than a little disconcerting to see 0 Free RAM without any processes appearing to be using it.

I understand that Free RAM could be seen as wasted resources but I thought that it would leave some free for fast launching of apps. With a 931GB (2x 500GB RAID 0) Hard Drive with a system managed Pagefile, a 4GB Readyboost USB Stick and 8GB of RAM what on earth could it use it all for? I guess only Vista knows ;-) lol

Thank you all again for your informative posts. You have put my mind at ease.

JKay6969

mate ..you have no need for ready boost.........disable it

this is an option to speed up machines that have very little ram...

Jeet Chowdhury · Jul 4, 2008

svchost.exe is a system process but some time it can infected by virus. try avast home edition to scan ur pc.

btw, keep updating your anti-virus....

best of luck....

jkay6969 · Jul 4, 2008

Should I really disable Readyboost? I thought that although I had plenty of memory, a pagefile type cache that wouldn't suffer from fragmentation would be a bonus. Would it slow my machine down or simply not be used much? I have the USB stick anyways and I don't use it for anything else.

I use AVG Internet security V8 and update it every 2 hours, I scan my system every morning while I'm at work or sleeping.

JKay6969

Jeet Chowdhury · Jul 4, 2008

AVG One of The F***ing Anti-Virus Protection I Ever See. Some Time It Detect Himself As Virus. Also, It Showing Game NoCD Cracks, Or Any KeyGen As Virus. Unnecessary. Also Show TCP IP Half Open Patch As Virus.....

Better Try Avast, KasperSky, ZoneAlerm Etc.....

Norton Really Slow Down System.

Anyway, Avast Is Free And I Think Best........

damocles · Jul 4, 2008

.......Keygens and NoCD cracks?.........You wouldn't need those if you bought software!!!

Jeet Chowdhury · Jul 5, 2008

NoCd Crack Reqired Because Always Want For CD That Irritating, So, NoCD Make It Easy.

fieseler · Jul 5, 2008

i have 8gb of ram yet no paging file yet i never use barely over 1gb while idle. Even when playing cod4 it only just reaches 3gb. Try downloading nod32 trial & doing a scan.

p.s. post a screenshot of ur taskmanager performace tab.

Jeet Chowdhury · Jul 5, 2008

fieseler said:
i have 8gb of ram yet no paging file yet i never use barely over 1gb while idle. Even when playing cod4 it only just reaches 3gb. Try downloading nod32 trial & doing a scan.

P.s. Post a screenshot of ur taskmanager performace tab.

+1

jkay6969 · Jul 6, 2008

Here's a Grab of my Performance tab of Task Manager.

JKay6969

Jeet Chowdhury · Jul 6, 2008

WoW 4 Cores...

Anyway, Did You Disabled UAC. Because Shield Not Showing. Buddy UAC Really Useful.

And 73 Process. So, It Using That Huge RAM. My PC Usage 40-55 Process. When SQL Serevr, Oracle, Visual Studio, MySQL, IIS Server Etc Installed On My PC. My Usage Is Hardlly 1.2GB.

Btw, Can U Post Your Process Tab Or All Process Name. Then I Can Tell You Which Are Useful Or Not.(As I Not Know All About Them

)

So, There Is Too Many Programs.

Also Do One Thing.

Press WinKey+R When In Desktop. A Run Window Will Open, Type There - "msconfig" Without Quote.

Goto Service Tab And Click Hide All Microsoft Services. And Then Click Disable All. Now Goto Startup Tab Click Disable All. Then Restart Your PC. See If There Changes In RAM.

And You May Then Turn Useful Services And Startup Application On From msconfig.

That All.

Jeet.

jkay6969 · Jul 6, 2008

Hi Jeet,

I did what you recomended and after disabling all, resetting and checking performance tab after 10mins it showed the same, 0 free RAM, actually when I boot, I can watch the free RAM slowly drop from 7GB to 0 within 10 mins.

There was only 1 service that I didn't want running and I left it disabled for now and that was Adobe service.

The rest were required for my various devices, Nokia N95, Logitech DiNovo Edge Keyboard, Logitech MX Revolution Mouse, uTorrent 1.77 (Till my server is back online), iMON remote control, Daemon Tools (can't live without), intel RAID Tool.

I'll look out nod32 trial and try it out but I'm a little loath to try that as then I'd need to uninstall my AVG8 then re-install again, however if it'll solve my problem I'll do it.

I turned off UAC as, although I appreciated how good it was, it locks out my remote control when it pops up. This meant I had to fetch my keyboard or mouse all the time. My system is in my living room so that became a bit of a pain. If it learned what programs were safe, user prompting perhaps, then it'd pop up much less and become far more usable for my situation.

Attached are a series of screens showing my running processes.

JKay6969

Chappy · Jul 6, 2008

And 73 Process. So, It Using That Huge RAM.

Not so, in most cases you can disable another 30 processes and save maybe 40MB of RAM and we've tested that extensively on my main Tech site. Turning off Services is not the way to save resources and there is definitely an issue here when his RAM drops to 0.
Even with Prefetch doing it's job this shouldn't happen, even tho I totally agree with "Free RAM is Wasted RAM", but it also has to be made available to new programs or services as they need it too.

Goto Service Tab And Click Hide All Microsoft Services. And Then Click Disable All. Now Goto Startup Tab Click Disable All. Then Restart Your PC. See If There Changes In RAM.

And You May Then Turn Useful Services And Startup Application On From msconfig.

That All.

Umm...after he shuts down all those services, you're not going to tell him which are the "Useful" ones to turn back on???
Kinda leaving it up to him to figure out the mess you just made for him eh...

jkay - Don't worry about a few services or processes, that's not your problem and you have more than enough resources to be handling 73 processes...way more, so no need to go messing with things you don't need to.

Now, we do have to figure out why your resources are disappearing...whoa, I just checked out your Screenshot and you're reading the wrong area for this. You are showing as using 3.66G's of RAM out of your 8G's. The lower area you're reading is showing it including the Prefetch usage, which will (and should be) almost always all used up. That's where the "Free is Wasted" comes in, so you still have 4.4G's of RAM available to the system.

Jeet Chowdhury · Jul 6, 2008

But, He Said Why Useage Too Much Ram. Cause My System When Run 80 Process Not Using More Than 1.6GB of RAM. I Have 2GB RAM, Maybe For This.

But The Service That Not Microsoft Service, Are Naturally Not Useful, Only Anti-Virus Program Is Useful..... Or Some Time SQL Server Agent Etc....

Anyway, Chappy Thanks To Know Me 30 Process Free Up Only 40MB. :confused:

jkay6969 · Jul 6, 2008

Hi Chappy,

Thank you for analizing my situation and expanding on the situation, I now understand that the section I was looking at was Free physical RAM which because it's mostly prefetched with data is showing 0 free, although the memory bar above is showing how much is being 'Actually Used'.

So when I read it now in the Physical memory box it shows Free as 0 but above it in the Memory box it's showing 2.12GB used which leaves 5.88GB free according to 8GB - 2.12GB = 5.88GB.

So in effect I had nothing to be concerned about, it was simply Vista doing what it does, which is maximize resource usage, or at least attempts to :-) lol

To Jeet,

Thank you for explaining how to access the process management screen and for telling me how to disable processes from running, I'll certainly keep an eye on that for any processes apearing that I don't expect to be there.

Thank you all for your help, insight and understanding of my problem and helping me find a resolution, even if it was to show me the nose on the end of my face :-)

JKay6969

Chappy · Jul 6, 2008

Exactly jkay...exactly!
Glad you understand now and real glad that there isn't a big bad problem we have to discover...

@ jeet -

Jeet said:
But The Service That Not Microsoft Service, Are Naturally Not Useful, Only Anti-Virus Program Is Useful..... Or Some Time SQL Server Agent Etc....

Sorry, but incorrect again. There are MANY Non-MS Services that are not only Useful, but actually REQUIRED for the proper operation of most users machines, so shutting off anything except MS services is really asking for trouble later on (or sooner). Plus now you add some other in your list that you didn't tell the user before, like that their AV service and Firewall service are needed, and "this" service if they need it, or that one if they have this...etc. See where we could run into troubles with that advice?

I can't tell you how many times we've had a user come in to one of my forums and complain about some weird issue with So&So program or device, and after weeks of head scratching and 100's of suggestions, it's found out to be caused by a service that was disabled by the user following someone like "Black Vipers" Services Tweaks page.

Also most normal users can't make heads or tails of most services and what they actually do, so they could really be up Sh*t-creek following that advice. For instance, how many normal users would recognize just what this means...:

"The Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) service provides network authentication in such scenarios as 802.1x wired and wireless, VPN, and Network Access Protection (NAP). EAP also provides application programming interfaces (APIs) that are used by network access clients, including wireless and VPN clients, during the authentication process. If you disable this service, this computer is prevented from accessing networks that require EAP authentication."

Now, ask them if they know whether that's needed or not...even tho it is an MS service.
Yah, us so called "Experts" may understand the gibberish, but Normal Joe-User sure doesn't, so it's best to just leave well enough alone in this aspect.
And really, the resources saved are so minimal in todays machines that it's just not worth it really, more headache than it's worth.

Memory Issue with Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

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