Too much RAM used up in Windows 8.1

[0Louis0]

I bought a new laptop with Windows 8 (updated to 8.1) 64 bits with 8 GB of RAM. The problem is large RAM is always used up, around 4 GBs when I'm running nothing.
Task manager is showing no weird behavior, all the running tasks aren't using that much individually.
I could see that many people had this problem, but there have been different causes for it, so I thought the best thing I would do is ask for help.
I don't really know about RAM stuff but it seems that I have too high non-paged pool usage

http://i.imgur.com/wTtxNsy.png
http://i.imgur.com/uzwWSeZ.png
http://i.imgur.com/kKvau0u.png
http://i.imgur.com/VxDp2TZ.png

[xendrome]

This is normal. Windows Vista and up are pre-caching your frequently used apps so that when you launch them, it is faster.

 

Unused ram is wasted, so this is by design. Nothing to see here.

[Noir Angel]

Superfetch. It's nothing to worry about, the memory will be freed if something else needs it.

[notchinese]

I don't think that is superfetch, that ram is legitimately in use by something. Unfortunately its hard to tell what it is from those screenshots. My understanding of the non-paged pool memory (which as you indicated is really high...my system with 16GB ram only has a non-paged pool size of 167 MB) is often used by drivers. Perhaps install updated drivers and that will fix it?

[HawkMan]

What people often don't know is that overwriting memory is as fast as writing to empty memory.

 

that means superfecth reserves available free memory for stuff you are likely to start up or use the memory for so it's already there. then there's absolutely zero lag until the program has started since it's already in memory.

 

Now all the memory superfecth reserves, isn't really reserved, it's still available for anything else, so if you start another app that needs the memory pluperfect is using, superfecth merely releases it and the app will overwrite what's there. just as fast as if the memory had been empty. memory isn't an etchasketch that needs to be wiped before you can write something else. 

[daniel_rh]

Try running a very demanding app that uses a lot of RAM or more than one app at once and see if after that, the RAM usage is lower. If so, this shows that it was mostly cache being used by Windows in the beginning

[Dolan]

Yeah its strange! I have also have Windows 8.1 update 1 x64 and when i power on my pc or it is idle it use only 800mb RAM!

[_neutrino Veteran]

I have windows 8.1u1 x64 and my system uses around 1.86Gb of Ram sitting idle

[notchinese]

Please try the solution listed in this post:

 

http://superuser.com/questions/533135/98-100-memory-use-no-process-uses-more-than-25mb/533187#533187

[Noir Angel]

My system with 8GB in it is currently idling at 3.1GB and all I have open is a browser with 3 tabs, it looks as if the OP has a lot more services running than I do, so it's to be expected.

[exotoxic]

No point in having 8GB to not use it.

[Ve7878]

Got any Virtual Machines running?

[ViperAFK]

What people often don't know is that overwriting memory is as fast as writing to empty memory.

 

that means superfecth reserves available free memory for stuff you are likely to start up or use the memory for so it's already there. then there's absolutely zero lag until the program has started since it's already in memory.

 

Now all the memory superfecth reserves, isn't really reserved, it's still available for anything else, so if you start another app that needs the memory pluperfect is using, superfecth merely releases it and the app will overwrite what's there. just as fast as if the memory had been empty. memory isn't an etchasketch that needs to be wiped before you can write something else. 

superfetch doesn't show up in Non-paged pool memory though, it shows up as 'standby', his screenshots *do* show somewhat unusual NPP mem usage guys...

 

High NPP memory usage can indicate a driver memory leak and things like that.

 

The screenshots don't look too concerning overall though, because there is still plenty of 'standby' and 'free' memory available. However if OP notices NPP mem just keeps rising higher and higher over time that could indicate a driver causing a memory leak (I've seen several drivers cause this in windows 8, older versions of realtek ethernet drivers in particular)

[0Louis0]

Wow that was a fast reaction from the forum.

I don't think it's something related to Superfetch guys.

First, when I run a simple game with a browser on (not much tabs) it starts giving me "low on memory" warnings (which I think wouldn't happen if it was superfetch?). It also heats up, because of the RAM I would suppose, since the processor has low percentage of usage at that time, and since both my processor and video card would run that game very easily.

Second, I have another VAIO laptop with the same amount of RAM, and Windows 8.1 Pro, and the memory used is much lower than here. If it was superfetch, wouldn't it be the same as my current laptop?

 

And no, when I run more a more demanding app(s) the RAM used up doesn't decrease, it actually increases to 80% and gives warnings like I said.

 

 

Got any Virtual Machines running?

 

Not yet.. I was planning to, but this RAM problem is blocking my way.

 

 

Please try the solution listed in this post:

 

http://superuser.com/questions/533135/98-100-memory-use-no-process-uses-more-than-25mb/533187#533187

 

will check it out and post any news. Thanks.

 

Edit:

Forgot to say, my drivers are all updated (according to VAIO update), and I'm not having any special softwares installed that could be running in the background

[ViperAFK]

Wow that was a fast reaction from the forum.

I don't think it's something related to Superfetch guys.

First, when I run a simple game with a browser on (not much tabs) it starts giving me "low on memory" warnings (which I think wouldn't happen if it was superfetch?). It also heats up, because of the RAM I would suppose, since the processor has low percentage of usage at that time, and since both my processor and video card would run that game very easily.

Second, I have another VAIO laptop with the same amount of RAM, and Windows 8.1 Pro, and the memory used is much lower than here. If it was superfetch, wouldn't it be the same as my current laptop?

 

And no, when I run more a more demanding app(s) the RAM used up doesn't decrease, it actually increases to 80% and gives warnings like I said.

 

 

 

Not yet.. I was planning to, but this RAM problem is blocking my way.

 

 

 

will check it out and post any news. Thanks.

 

Edit:

Forgot to say, my drivers are all updated (according to VAIO update), and I'm not having any special softwares installed that could be running in the background

High NPP memory usage like that does typically indicate a misbehaving driver, if I had to hazard a guess that'd be it.

[McKay]

When I had Windows 8 on my machine with 6GB of RAM it used between 3.5/4GB of RAM. Now I have 16GB of RAM the usage actually went down...  :huh:

 

[zhangm Supervisor]

First, when I run a simple game with a browser on (not much tabs) it starts giving me "low on memory" warnings (which I think wouldn't happen if it was superfetch?). It also heats up, because of the RAM I would suppose, since the processor has low percentage of usage at that time, and since both my processor and video card would run that game very easily.

Definitely doesn't sound like SuperFetch. Regarding driver updates, I have misgivings about OEM-supplied update utilities. I'd recommend identifying your hardware components and looking for the latest first party drivers, e.g. Intel wireless card > check Intel's website for the latest version.

[MorganX]

Normal, no VMs. Many regular Modern UI apps running (mail, calendar, Lync, Alarms, RDP, WSOP, AlphaJax, IE, OneDrive, OneDrive business. 1GB Ramdisk, One Note, The Maxifier, Excel 2013 is always open. This is my idle baseline, I find Windows 8.1U1 x64 to be very memory efficient. I run with no page, all my disks except for an 2TB USB 3.0 external are SSDs, and I just choose not to put an unneeded page file on them.

[0Louis0]

Please try the solution listed in this post:

 

http://superuser.com/questions/533135/98-100-memory-use-no-process-uses-more-than-25mb/533187#533187

 

Okay I tried Poolmon and it showed no abnormal memory values, http://i.imgur.com/PmwQzgk.png Nothing is above 8 digits (eg. 12000000 bytes which counts as around 10 mbs)

I'm pretty lost on what to do.

 

Definitely doesn't sound like SuperFetch. Regarding driver updates, I have misgivings about OEM-supplied update utilities. I'd recommend identifying your hardware components and looking for the latest first party drivers, e.g. Intel wireless card > check Intel's website for the latest version.

 

Do you still recommend that after Poolmon showed no errors? It would be quite hard to uninstall each driver and download it from the manufacturer's website.

[+Neyht Subscriber²]

So you have a viao ... with an ati video card.  VIAO says your drivers are up to date?  Sure they are.... check the driver date in device manager just to be sure.  You don't have hybrid graphics do you?

 

Intel and ati  graphics drivers?

 

Do you still recommend that after Poolmon showed no errors? It would be quite hard to uninstall each driver and download it from the manufacturer's website.

 

Well, alright.... but that link did say that a certain driver of a certain date was causing an issue. 

 

I'm only bringing up hybrid graphics because if you have hybrid(switchable) graphics then you're in the same boat as me.....

[daorbed9]

This is not normal usage.  It is likely a driver as others have said.  Try this, uninstall drivers one at a time and see what happens.  It's not a service or running process taking the memory.  Just for reference, I have a bukkit server running with only 2.9G used.  Generally windows will not be using more than 2GB at boot.  Drivers can affect this but not usually to a great effect.  The "In Use" is not cache. It's actually reserved for use, whether it's being used or not it is not available and being assigned to something.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Westren Digital Backup Drive you have? WDBoost.exe process seems to indicate it, I once read it having issue detailed under following blog by one Valve employee.

 

http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/windows-slowdown-investigated-and-identified/

 

Worth checking his fixup solution...

 

From same author on different blog post he mentioned this:

 

 

I just heard back from Western Digital yesterday and apparently a fixed driver is now available. Version 1.1.3.1 was released over the weekend, so if you have this drive be sure to get the update.

 

This is very wild guess and I can be completely wrong, on the hand try this below article for vsserv.exe process:

http://www.bitdefender.com/support/what-is-the-vsserv-exe-process-1116.html

[mrp04]

This is definitely not normal and it's not superfetch as some people are saying. Superfetch used RAM shows up as "standby" RAM in the task manager, not as "In Use". Just start killing things one by one in the task manager.

[HawkMan]

This is definitely not normal and it's not superfetch as some people are saying. Superfetch used RAM shows up as "standby" RAM in the task manager, not as "In Use". Just start killing things one by one in the task manager.

 

And how will he kill a river in task manager ;)   also if it's a proper bad memory leak killing might not work. granted windows will generally clean up any bad remains nowadays but...

[jesseinsf]

That Bitdefender needs to go. Any security software runs on top of the OS. Windows defender is embedded. Also what is in your startup Tab in Task Manager? I noticed you have allot of unnecessary processes.