Excessive Ram Usage on Windows 7 after a session

[Iztooi]

Hi, all
In the past couple of months i'm having a serious ram problem that i haven't had before.
After a long session (I'd say 8 hours but it's starting to get shorter and shorter, sometimes after 6 hours i have this problem) of gaming, using internet and similar, my ram usage gets pretty high without having processes open. I have 8 GB of ram and if i start the session with a minimum ram usage of about 1,7 GB (about 20%) i finish the "session" with an usage of about 4,7 GB (about 60%) (and i repeat) without having processes open.

Solutions that i tried were a malware scan, that didn't find anything; reducing the services run at the start, that didn't resolve anything; i even tried some sort of memory cleaner both the windows one (rundll32 with advapi32.dll, that should be a ram flush) and external ones.

Searching through the web someone was saying that it's ok if the ram usage is so high because it means that there's no ram free and it's good because windows can use that used ram to start processes faster and replace the processes ram usage with the one in idle. The fact is that the ram is not in idle but it's the physical usage.
Before i said that i hadn't processes open when i had a 60% usage of the ram, i meant that summing up the working set of the singular processes they don't reach the 60% but just a 30%.

Someone was saying that the ram usage is in the cache, but even that the ram usage in the cache was 300 MB (using the resource monitor).

The only solution that i found is a restart. Restarting resets the ram and all that extra 3GB used disappear.

The fact is that before these two months i had the computer turned on for days, and i was able to suspend after a day (now i think, since there's this ram problem, it can't suspend because the suspension use the ram) now i can't and i have to restart.

Any solutions? Thanks in advance!

 

[trampus123]

Try some different ram

 

[neieus]

What you are describing sounds like a memory leak. You can use task manager or process explorer to determine what's consuming it.

Please clear up a few things. What's your ram usage while gaming and while at idle?

 

[ronintexas]

As you have adding things to the computer (downloaded new programs, etc), you will find system performance degrades. Consider removing programs that aren't used - especially those that load in memory on startup. You can check to see what is utilizing that RAM in task manager.

Windows with "special effects" (i.e. AERO) takes 2-2.5GB of RAM for OS alone. Disabling AERO and other special effects will put you closer to the 1GB mark. Depending upon what is starting up with the computer (programs like anti-virus, anti-malware, video drivers, etc) all take up memory as well.

 

[Iztooi]

It could be a memory leak, my question is though: Shouldn't it be showed on the task manager/process explorer? Because as i was saying when, after a session, i check the ram usage and it's high, if i sum up all the working set size of the singular processes, they don't correspond with the physical usage.

My ram usage during the session could change. Usually i keep firefox opened and while gaming my physical usage can reach 80%. In idle it's progressive: at the start is 20%, if i close up all the processes during the session it reaches about 40%, after 6-8 hours it reaches 60%.

For the other solution: I suspected that it could be an hardware problem, but i checked with a software, it shouldn't be that.

 

[ronintexas]

I played the game Mafia Wars on facebook for about 5 years. It was a flash game played in browser. Most people used scripts to assist in playing the game. When you first started playing, my memory levels would be about 3GB. After playing for 4-6 hours, they would be at 6-8GB. I had to shut down the browser completely, and it would return to 3GB.

Depending upon what the game is loading - it may or may not be releasing the memory for the modules that it uses - when you do a hard reboot, it forces the "flush" of the memory. It may be possible that the game(s) you are playing are not releasing the memory when they terminate....

 

[Iztooi]

@ronintexas i get what are you saying and maybe it could be my case. But other than hard rebooting my computer, what are my options? It could really be that some games don't release completely the memory and it doesn't show it up because the process is closed but the memory is still used.

 

[ronintexas]

With Mafia Wars - you just had to close the browser. Are you playing a specific game, or multiple games? It may be worth while to check the message boards with the game's website.

 

[Iztooi]

Usually i play different games, with sessions that last 2-3 hours. So i play 2-3 games per windows session (because after that i can't even open a game because it reachs 90-95% memory usage and it's very laggy. The weird thing is that before these 2 months i played the same games and had no problems on keeping the computer turned on for days. I was only trying to search an alternative solution to an hard reboot, or something to easily find the cause so i know what to avoid or what to expect if i open that.
I could definitely buy some extra RAM to extend a session but the problem will still remain.

 

[ronintexas]

When you have the 90-95% memory usage - have you looked in task manager to see what is still running? Something isn't terminating properly.

 

[Iztooi]

Last time i checked, when i had 90-95% memory usage i had only firefox (with flash player linked) and the game i was playing (LoL but i don't think it matters). But summing up the working set (that should be the physical usage) of the all the individual processes, they didn't match up the memory usage. (summing up gave 4.5 GB used, while the physical usage was at 7.5-7.7 GB)