My Windows 8 is consuming Huge amount of RAM.

itspriyank

itspriyank

Level E
I have Windows 8 Pro installed on my rig and it is consuming extremely high amount of RAM like 80-85% plus most of the time and 90% + while gaming.

WHEN IDLE
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task-manager-2.PNG


WHEN GAMING
gaming.PNG



Here are the Specs:
Intel i5-3570k
8GB G.Skill RipJaws RAM
ATI/AMD 7970HD 3GB ASUS DCII GPU
2TB HDD

cpu-z.PNG


What could be the reasons behind it? I have had BitDefender installed and I even uninstalled that. With BitDefender installed idle usage is 85-87%.
 
That's quite a lot of memory being used, specially considering that you have 8 GB of RAM.

It seems like that your system has a lot of running processes all at the same time, some of which might not be required to run at all, unless required.

You should check for unnecessary startup processes/services that can be disabled. You can use the Startup tool in CCleaner for that.

Also, sometimes malware can cause a system to consume more RAM too. So, have you scanned the system thoroughly with a good antivirus, and also an antimalware?

Which antivirus are you using presently?
 
Seems normal to me - are you noticing any lags? If yes, then its not normal. Else, attribute this to the new fast features in Windows 8

My laptop is using 2GB of the 4GB installed, but its an almost fresh install.
 
This amount of memory usage is not normal in any situation. I have a Windows 8 32-bit system, and right now, with Firefox and Tixati running, it's using 38% of RAM. I have 4 GB of RAM, so that means less than half is being used. I have Avast installed on my system.

The image does not show all the processes running on his system, but I can see a few processes which might be causing more RAM to be used, like Steam, Google Drive, Antimalware service, PC companion etc. There must be others in the full list of processes. Many of these processes might not be required to run all the time, and stopping them should definitely increases the performance of the system. But definitely, some overhaul is needed.
 
Thanks everyone for your replies.
On TomsHardware Guys told me that this is a feature of Windows 8 in which it caches the RAM to make processes faster. But i can be disabled too and the the OS will start caching on HDD which is considerably very slower than RAM.
BTW I am using BitDefender Internet Security right now.
 
Not convinced with their reply. Even if that was the case, I don't think that it's on by default. By default, Windows 8 uses a set amount of hard drive space for virtual RAM.
Did they tell you where and how you could change the setting?

BitDefender is supposed to be a light one, if I am right.

I still think there are many processes running, which take up your RAM.
 
blackperl said:
bitdiffender eats too much PC resources ,so i removed and using kaspersky pure 3
Click to expand...
I have purchased 2 years bitdefender license so I will have to go on with it, & it consumes a hell lot of RAM. But I have had removed it before taking the images posted above.

CapriAnupam said:
Not convinced with their reply. Even if that was the case, I don't think that it's on by default. By default, Windows 8 uses a set amount of hard drive space for virtual RAM.
Did they tell you where and how you could change the setting?

BitDefender is supposed to be a light one, if I am right.

I still think there are many processes running, which take up your RAM.
Click to expand...
Yes they said it could be disabled by using winconfig, which has been updated to good extent in windows 8.
I checked it out and saw that there was was an option to limit RAM usage. But it also limits the usage for applications and not just windows.
Surely some processes are consuming too much RAM in my case.
 
itspriyank said:
Yes they said it could be disabled by using winconfig, which has been updated to good extent in windows 8.
I checked it out and saw that there was was an option to limit RAM usage. But it also limits the usage for applications and not just windows.
Surely some processes are consuming too much RAM in my case.
Click to expand...

Are you sure they said winconfig? There is no winconfig in Windows 8.

When you say limit RAM usage, are you talking about actual RAM usage, or the virtual RAM, which is an area on the hard disk? Why would anyone want to limit either of them?

Could you post a link to that thread on TomsHardware... would want to read for myself.

If you have good knowledge of computers, then you can look at the startup processes with CCleaner. Or, you can post the processes list here, if someone can help with that. HJT logs will help too, but someone here should be qualified/experienced to help you with that.. also, don't know whether posting HJT(HiJackThis) logs here is allowed.

I know that on www.techguy.org, an experienced person will help you with the startup processes if you post an HJT log.
 
Their replies seem to indicate that they think this much of RAM consumption is normal. I am using 32-bit Windows 8, and I haven't used 64-bit Windows ever, but I still think that so much of RAM should not be consumed under normal situations.

80-85% of RAM usage is abnormal and ridiculous.

I don't know what they were trying to suggest there.

You should check the list of processes, and startup processes. If you are not sure of anything, just search on Google, you will know whether that process should start automatically or not. You can also check the Services list.

As mentioned earlier, also scan for malware on your PC. A malware infection can also cause the system to use such amount of RAM.
 
That seems wierd to me too.
Here is the screenshot of process explorer. I have scanned with cc Cleaner and antimalware too. Also remove 140GB of temporary data from C drive.

process explorer.PNG
 
^^ What's so weird here? You are running so many things that your memory consumption is ought to be on the higher side.

Change the start-up type appropriately for non-essential/unwanted services.
 
Have you turned off Index Service ? that may work but i'm not sure also manage limited applications at start-up and restart see if it helps or not .

I read an article about Index Service..
  • Indexing Indexing is the process of extracting information from documents. The index contains contents from the main body of documents but doesn't include words on any exception word lists associated with the catalog. Indexes are compressed to save space.

  • Catalog building Catalog building is the process of storing the index information in a named location. Catalogs contain extracted content in the form of indexes and stored properties for a set of documents.

  • Merging Merging is the process of combining temporary indexes to create combined or master indexes. Merging indexes improves performance of the Indexing Service and reduces the amount of random access memory (RAM) used to store temporary indexes in memory.
Click to expand...
 
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There definitely seems to be lot of processes running, which is the cause of the problem. I think you should get some help from an experienced person who will help you turn off unnecessary processes.

I will tell about the few things that I noticed myself.

The Steam related processes are taking up quite a lot of memory. You may want to turn them off somehow, if you are not using them all the time. I don't play games, and I dont have experience with Steam, so I can't help with that... but it's definitely taking up RAM.

Other thing taking up considerable RAM is the process MsMpEng.exe, which is the process for Windows Defender. Do you currently have no antivirus on your system? Or, maybe you installed MSE? In that case, Windows Defender gets active. It is known to take up lot of RAM and CPU too. You should install a good antivirus, so that Windows Defender will not come into play. You can also take a look at these webpages:

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/cpu-load-usage-100-msmpengexe-fix/

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-vista-tips/what-is-msmpeng-exe/

Another one is RuntimeBroker.exe, which too is known to use a lot of RAM and CPU. It's associated with Windows Apps, which make use of live tiles, and so they are constantly updating information on the live tile, and these can take up RAM. So, if you have such Windows apps, which make use of live tiles, it would be better to uninstall them, if they are not necessary. I don't think an app is worth it, if it cause so much of CPU and RAM use. You can read more here:

http://www.groovypost.com/howto/runtimebroker-exe-process-windows-8-running/

Also, vmss.exe, which is associated with Virtual Machine is taking up RAM too. So, you can do something about that too. Again, I don't have experience with that.

Similarly, there might be other processes too, which are running unnecessarily, or, causing use of RAM. There are some processes which are not in the image, as there must be more when you scroll down. So, you should check up on what all you can stop from running always, and run them only when needed.

Get help if you can't do it yourself. As I told earlier, post in techguy.org, or some other forum, where people have experience with such things.
 
Hey thanks @CapriAnupam for the great help you provided throughout. I did a lot of research on this and found out that Windows 8 does not cache that much amount of RAM as guys on tomshardware suggested.

So I disabled all the services from msconfig.exe and to my surprise the RAM usage was just 16-18 % idle.
Here...

after disabling all services.PNG


After that many things stopped working like LAN, Themes, Sound, Date and time......so on. Then Researched all the services one by one and enabled the required ones but in this way i started almost many of them and to even greater surprise this was the RAM usage...

important services started.PNG


So I am still trying to find out which service was actually using so much of RAM. But as far as I am able to guess the culprit could be Hyper - V. I think it caches Physical RAM to make virtual RAM available form virtual OS whenever needed.
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Maya2009 said:
Have you turned off Index Service ? that may work but i'm not sure also manage limited applications at start-up and restart see if it helps or not .

I read an article about Index Service..
Click to expand...
I did tried it out as the first solution but not enough effect, except disk usage reduced.
 

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I am glad to be of help :).

Yes, turning off indexing service won't help much, as you found out yourself... it will only decrease disk usage. It does not uses much amount of RAM, which is the main issue here.

Do you use virtualization? Hyper-V is used for virtualization purpose, or to setup a virtual server. So, it would be better to turn it off, if you are not using it. You can turn it off by unchecking it in "Turn Windows features on or off" which is available in Add/Remove Programs window.

Apart from that, you should also try to research on the processes I mentioned earlier, and work on them.

Well, I will advise you not to follow the method you are using currently to manage the startup processes. As you found out, this approach can cause several programs, and OS itself to not function properly. So, it's better, if you let the system remain as it was, and then research each process, and then decide if you want to turn it off or not. Research the services too. That's why I said, if you can get help, do get help.

And yes, as you found out, turning off unnecessary processes will really make a lot of difference, and will bring down the RAM and CPU usage drastically.. there were really a lot of processes running on your system.
 
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