Vista uses up 4gigs of memory and freezes my computer


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This problem has now happened twice in two days now. I will be randomly doing something on my computer when it practically seizes up. After getting the task manager to come up (takes about a minute), it shows that 3.8 out of my 4 gigs of ram are currently being used while the CPU is at 2-3% usage.

I have done AV and antispyware scans and come up with nothing. What could cause this?

His problem is that his computer is slowing to a crawl, not the high RAM usage. SuperFetch should not be causing HDD I/O problems thanks to low priority I/O. Have you upgraded any drivers lately, be it intentionally or via Windows Update?

His problem is that his computer is slowing to a crawl, not the high RAM usage. SuperFetch should not be causing HDD I/O problems thanks to low priority I/O. Have you upgraded any drivers lately, be it intentionally or via Windows Update?

The OP is correlating the slow performance to memory usage hence all the replies about Vista's memory management.

Vista probably is caching your memory. This is normal.

Post a screenshot of your taskmanager.

I will next time it happens but the computer pretty much comes to a screeching halt so I don't think it is normal.

His problem is that his computer is slowing to a crawl, not the high RAM usage. SuperFetch should not be causing HDD I/O problems thanks to low priority I/O. Have you upgraded any drivers lately, be it intentionally or via Windows Update?

I think it somehow stems from Nvidia's newest forceware but I can't remember if it happened before that, either that or I have an inkling it might be Dreamscene. I think that because yesterday I didn't run it at all and I didn't have the issue. My computer is more than capable of handling Dreamscene so I'm not sure what the issue is.

It's normal for Vista to seize up his computer to an unusable state??

Of course not.

OP - what applications do you have running at the time?

I know from experience that the Trillian Astra alpha causes Windows to get into an unusuable state sometime, and the only thing you can do is Ctrl+Alt+Del and select Log Off.

i would have thought if it was bad memory it would crash out the machine not slow it down.

Sounds like the HDD is being thrashed for some reason? Does your hdd light flash consistently when you have the slow down?

I will check next time if it happens again. I have plenty of things to check for thanks to you guys so please keep checking back this week as I will try to say if it happens again.

Can you run a memtest off of a USB?

How should I exactly run xperf? Have it running all the time or only try to bring it up (would probably be painfully slow) when the computer is at a near halt?

xperf runs in the background and runs a trace on your system while your using it...if you run it this way it will run all the way through the halt, that way you can then stop the trace and look at the logs using the xperf viewer and see where its stopping and find out if its a software, or driver issue. If none of those are the culprit then i'd start stress testing your hardware to see if its one of your components.

vista uses all your memory for a good reason, if it slowing you down then try to run less programs, also have you installed sp1 and all updates?have you changed any default settings?

vista uses all your memory for a good reason, if it slowing you down then try to run less programs, also have you installed sp1 and all updates?have you changed any default settings?

Pretty sure running two small programs at the same time isn't causing it (Alice and WMP) and yes I have all the updates.

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