Phantom Memory Usage?

[Nagisan]

First off, this has nothing to do with caching or anything of the likes. So do not suggest caching as the reason.

Currently, as I sit here, my system has 2.5GB of free memory (that is, memory that is available if need be for Windows to use by un-caching cached items). I have a total of 6GB of memory, and as of this moment, 3.5GB is in use (NOT cached, actually counted as in use in Task Manager).

Now, the problem is usually I have over 3GB free, with no more than 2.5GB in use at any time, unless I am playing a game. Right now, I have Opera, uTorrent, and no other main programs loaded (I have FRAPS sitting in the background, same with Steam, and some other light software like Everest and Nimbuzz). The thing is, if I go down and add up all the memory usage under Windows Task Manager "Processes" tab, it is no more than 2GB in use.

As of right now, 22 tasks use more than 10MB of memory, those 22 tasks are using around 1,377,920 KB of memory, or, ~1.4GB. The other 45 processes (67 total) use less than 10MB, so they use no more than 450MB of ram combined. Total, that comes out to 1,827,920 KB, or, ~1.8GB of ram in use according to task manager.

My question, is where is this other 1.7GB of ram that is in usage? According to task manager, the processes on my computer are using ~1.8GB of ram, but at the same time it is telling me I have 3.5GB of ram in use.

I suspect a memory leak, but how can I go about finding out which application has the memory leak? Is there any software that can identify where the 1.7GB hole is?

Just as an extra note, all memory values were obtained from the Commit size (which, from my understanding, is how much memory Windows has reserved for an application, and therefore, the "proper" usage value).

Any help on this will be great.

[crispkreme]

Pics please? And are you showing system tasks?

[Nagisan]

Added to the first post, I had photoshop and a few other things so there are more processes, but the values do not come close to matching up, even when over-estimating sub-10MB usage by upping it to 10MB even.

I sorted processes by name so they wouldn't move around if memory changed while I was getting both sections for the pic, but that is every process running on my system right now, along with its committed memory, and how much task manager says is actually in use (not just cached).

And yes, system tasks included.

[Nagisan]

Okay, well, it appears the phantom memory usage was uTorrent. It has been a few weeks since I have used it, which caused me to think it was something more recently installed, but after closing it, I went down to 1.8GB in use (according to task managers Performance tab) which is much more on scale with what my processes add up to. For a total of 4.3GB free.

I am assuming it is due to uTorrents Caching feature, where it caches writes before writing them out every so many MBs to prevent constant writing of small files to the drive, but it shouldn't be holding nearly 2GBs of data in the ram and not writing it to disk until I close it.

Either way, this issue can be considered solved now, no clue why uTorrent holds so much in its cache without writing anything, or why it at least doesn't report the full ram it is using (maybe because it is cached HDD writes and not data uTorrent itself is actively using?)....who knows....annoying issue though, might have to play with the cache settings a bit.

[soldier1st]

contact utorrent and see what they say,also did you read the help file?

[MagicAndre1981]

Do what cluberti wrote here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/138036-memory-leak/

[Phenom II]

I get a memory increase like this if I mount an ISO in daemon tools