Memory usage at 60-80% with nothing running.

[Niohoggr]

Hey there. The problem I'm encountering is pretty much as the title says. All of a sudden too, since I've only been home during the weekends for the past couple of months, no idea what's causing this "memory leak" or whatever. No single process uses a shit ton of memory according to the task manager, Chrome being the highest. Avast virus scan didn't really find anything either.

Booted my computer, noticed 80% of my memory was being used right from the start. Running 8GB of the stuff too. After a while, got a BSOD saying "BAD_POOL_HEADER". The computer hasn't crashed since but the memory usage is still high. Any ideas?

I'm running Vista, if that helps.

 

[Ra_V_en]

Memtest86 from some bootable cd or pendrive.
Other thing with the mem usage:
Resource monitor, memory tab and look if there is any reserved memory like on this screen (2MB), it would be nice if you can send the printscreen as this one:

 

[Niohoggr]

Memtest86 from some bootable cd or pendrive.
Other thing with the mem usage:
Resource monitor, memory tab and look if there is any reserved memory like on this screen (2MB), it would be nice if you can send the printscreen as this one:

Hello.

Here's the screenshot.

 

[Ra_V_en]

Nope, we can't see it.

 

[Niohoggr]

Nope, we can't see it.

Sorry, no idea what happened there lol.

http://oi60.tinypic.com/2en3h8m.jpg

There's a link since I'm apparently a dummy and can't get the picture to show up.

 

[Ra_V_en]

Oh windows vista... that makes things a bit more difficult... couldn't find direct way get info about reserved memory,
this might show us a bit more tho.
Start -> Run -> MSINFO32

 

[Niohoggr]

Oh windows vista... that makes things a bit more difficult... couldn't find direct way get info about reserved memory,
this might show us a bit more tho.
Start -> Run -> MSINFO32

http://oi59.tinypic.com/33e32hj.jpg

Wow, how is it that low? Thought I'd do a system restore, and apparently all my system restore points have disappeared as well. Awesome!

 

[Ra_V_en]

Ok it seems there is no reserved memory, so this is going to be cache or I'm getting low on clues...

Now before we check the last screen lets talk about the error:
BAD_POOL_HEADER is typical in 3 situations:
- driver issues
- hard drive issues
- RAM issues

If you didn't install any new drivers then first option is off the topic.
For HDD testing I'd recommend downloading http://www.hdsentinel.com/
The software is quite easy in use, just after the start it will show you HDD health.
First thing to do would be to make a full surface scan looking for bad sectors:

If there is non bad blocks then for confirmation look over the SMART tab to look over the parameters, any with exclamation mark is suspicious:

Next step is to use Memtest86, here is a complete guide how to install it on bootable flash drive:
http://superuser.com/questions/727959/how-to-create-a-bootable-memtest86-on-usb-flash-drive

This will show you any memory issues.

So that should cover the crash thing. It could be a single incident or can be related with hardware failure, noneless its worth to make some testing to be sure.

Now back to the RAM usage, as said the only clue about low free memory is a caching.
To check this out use use task manager, memory tab:

If under Cached high values then it means this memory was used to buffering recently used files from the hard drive, there is nothing wrong with that actually it boosts the overal performance of the system.
The thing is this number should be quite low right after system boot, otherwise it means there might be lot of things starting with the OS, maybe there is some AntiVirus scanning on the windows start thus it will read some files and leave them in Cache.
Normally if you run some memory extensive application it should be wiped and ready for this app.

 

[Niohoggr]

Ok it seems there is no reserved memory, so this is going to be cache or I'm getting low on clues...

Now before we check the last screen lets talk about the error:
BAD_POOL_HEADER is typical in 3 situations:
- driver issues
- hard drive issues
- RAM issues

If you didn't install any new drivers then first option is off the topic.
For HDD testing I'd recommend downloading http://www.hdsentinel.com/
The software is quite easy in use, just after the start it will show you HDD health.
First thing to do would be to make a full surface scan looking for bad sectors:


If there is non bad blocks then for confirmation look over the SMART tab to look over the parameters, any with exclamation mark is suspicious:


Next step is to use Memtest86, here is a complete guide how to install it on bootable flash drive:
http://superuser.com/questions/727959/how-to-create-a-bootable-memtest86-on-usb-flash-drive

This will show you any memory issues.

So that should cover the crash thing. It could be a single incident or can be related with hardware failure, noneless its worth to make some testing to be sure.

Now back to the RAM usage, as said the only clue about low free memory is a caching.
To check this out use use task manager, memory tab:


If under Cached high values then it means this memory was used to buffering recently used files from the hard drive, there is nothing wrong with that actually it boosts the overal performance of the system.
The thing is this number should be quite low right after system boot, otherwise it means there might be lot of things starting with the OS, maybe there is some AntiVirus scanning on the windows start thus it will read some files and leave them in Cache.
Normally if you run some memory extensive application it should be wiped and ready for this app.

Okay I haven't yet run any of those programs. Considering I've barely used the computer for the past couple of months, don't you think it'd be weird for some hardware to have broken down when it has been mostly sitting idle?

The figure under "Cached" is at around 4.3k right now with a 15minute uptime and firefox running. The computer has been constantly getting sluggish after starting up, occasional freezing and eventually a total freeze that requires me to push the power button cause nothing is responding. Any ideas besides the ones you posted? Should I run the programs? Honestly I doubt the computer would even stay on for the HD check to run entirely.

 

[Niohoggr]

If it helps, the CPU usage seems to be strangely high as well.

 

[Ra_V_en]

So you have ~2,5 GB available + 4,3GB cached, thats 6,8 GB total. 1,2 GB used is nothing weird with Vista. So you either have some application running on the system boot and scanning lot of files or maybe a malware.
I'd suggest also trying to get Total360 security and run some scanning.
If you do all this tests and find no problem then i guess there is nothing to worry about, just some weirdo Vista caching behavior.