Question Not enough memory and programs crash. How to set memory management correctly ?

[Kletoss]

On my Lenovo IdeaPad 3 17ABA7 Laptop - Type 82RQ (Lenovo IdeaPad 3 82RQ003EGE) programs often crash or no longer work properly or give error messages, apparently because there is not enough RAM. Messages also appear more often that there is not enough RAM (from certain programs). Or the display goes black or the notebook stops responding for a few to many seconds or programs are displayed strangely (e.g. large areas with no content, only parts of the program, etc.). One or more drivers are apparently suddenly no longer available.

Have 16/14GB RAM. I previously had an Acer Aspire E 15 with 8 GB of RAM, so I didn't have any problems with that one although there was less RAM..

Can Win 11 somehow be set so that it manages the RAM correctly? Or can the problem be solved in some other way?

In Task Manager RAM is shown almost always or most of the time at 70, 90% usage. Adding up the individual programs displayed in the Task Manager only comes to perhaps 5 GB of RAM.

Error messages occurring when about 90 % of RAM is reached:

Why does Windows not automatically manage the RAM that way so that such would not happen?

 

[Colif]

12gb page file is a little much.

does memory amount used drop on a restart?

Its possible you have a memory leak in one of your drivers. It keeps asking for more memory and instead of returning it once its finished, it keeps asking for more. Windows can only give so much before it runs out.

Windows is pretty good at memory management but if a driver is playing up, this happens. It can normally detect programs misbehaving with memory but tis not perfect

have you run auto update? https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/3-series/ideapad-3-17aba7/downloads

 

[Kletoss]

does memory amount used drop on a restart?

Yes, it starts with less used memory and increases bit by bit up to the high use.

Its possible you have a memory leak in one of your drivers.

How could I find that driver?

have you run auto update? https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/3-series/ideapad-3-17aba7/downloads

Thank you for the link. Yes, I did, on the included / supplied / original installation from Lenovo. It showed everything was installed like it should be. Now I have completely installed a fresh Windows 11 and installed every driver manually from that Lenovo website.

 

[Colif]

so this is a clean install. And it still happens

figuring out which driver is the cause can take work

You probably need to run poolmon, it shows what is using memory on the system

video shows how to run it,

the top line of description has command you use to identify the tag, I can't copy it here as forums will play with its formating

you need to download the windows Driver toolkit - link - as it includes poolmon (just click go to site)


You want to find the tag that is using the biggest difference between Allocs & Frees as these are the processes keeping memory and not giving it back. Leaks are caused by software requesting memory and not giving it back when its finished.

Many of the processes are actually parts of windows as you can see the processes that manage memory here, so some will always have a lot. This is normal. You want to look at non Microsoft tags

this is a list of the most common tags - https://github.com/zodiacon/PoolMonXv2/blob/master/PoolMonX/res/pooltag.txt

I would run program just after boot, to get a baseline for usage and something to compare to when memory usage is massive

screenshots can help. uploading to an image sharing website and show links here for any you want help with.

 

[Kletoss]

so this is a clean install. And it still happens

Yes, that is right.

you need to download the windows Driver toolkit - link - as it includes poolmon (just click go to site)

Sorry, is this the right link? After clicking it this is shown:

Seems to be a Microsoft program.

You want to find the tag that is using the biggest difference between Allocs & Frees as these are the processes keeping memory and not giving it back. Leaks are caused by software requesting memory and not giving it back when its finished.

OK. If on a system that runs well programs are left running, if I do not close them and / or if I open programs although there would not be enough RAM anymore (so the needed RAM would exceed the hardware RAM) Win would manage that so that programs wouldn't crash, it would use the page.sys file instead of the RAM? So in other words might the problem be caused because I open to many programs (or tabs in Firefox, needing very much RAM)? I use the same programs like always / before, on the Notebook Acer Aspire E 15 and computers before, but I never had experienced such. Might there be a connection to the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 17ABA7. The BIOS / Uefi is updated as well.

screenshots can help. uploading to an image sharing website and show links here for any you want help with.

OK, super, thank you very much!

 

[Colif]

Seems to be a Microsoft program.

it is
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/download-the-wdk

it includes poolmon which is what you need to use to find the memory leak.

 

[Kletoss]

Ah, sorry for my confusion / low brain activities with the video link, there even wasn't a link to the program / kit.

Many thanks for the link!