ntoskrnl.exe ram usage is very high,looking for a fix

[Sourjyaraj]

this process labeled as System process is using ram like insane.while playing bf4 usually it can go upto 1500MB.there is sudden lag spikes and fps drops from constant 60FPS to 30 and sometimes it hoovers arround 1-10FPS for one or two secs.
I have 4gigs of RAM (ddr4)
geforce 940mx Gddr5 2gb card
intel i3 6th gen with 520 intigrated
windows 10 pro
i could play bf4 bf3 with maxed out(ultra) resolution and i was getting 30-35 fps...but i prefer playing at 1280x720 with high settings(not ultra) it gives me 60 constant fps at low gfx demanding area of the map and in some area i get 40 fps.(minimum),due to those levolution thing.(though i am highly satisfied with 40FPS at those moments where game changes its's course)
now when this ram hogging starts i face huge lag spikes and fps drops....so i am searching for fix cz this laptop is only 2 monts old.thanks in advance.

 

[Colif]

new technology operating system kernel (ntoskrnl) does so many things in windows it difficult to narrow down what might be cause. One thing it does is memory management so if you using more ram by loading large game files into ram while you play, it will have to shuffle around what was in ram back onto hard drive to make space.

which version of win 10 are you on?
right click start
choose run...
type winver and press enter

if you on any version before 1703, go to here and press upgrade now. that downloads upgrade assistant which will upgrade to latest version and maybe fix this.

 

[Sourjyaraj]

windows 10 pro build 10240
I had 1703 but it also has the same problem so i rolled back to 10240.
i didnt have this problem before on this current build 10240 but yesterday evening i rolled back to 10240 from 1703 creators update and while playing i am facing this. and yes i did a clean installation.

 

[Sourjyaraj]

disabling superfetch from loacal services the ram usage got back to normal for ntoskrnl.exe... but now bf4 using 1700MB+RAm .ram usage on task manager goes upto 98% and lags and stuttering remains which bring fps from 60 to 14. what should i do now?runnung at low settings doesnt work ... same problem

 

[Colif]

You are on the original build of win 10, released in July 2015, there have been 3 versions since then. Have you ever clean installed win 10? was win 10 an upgrade from 7 or 8?

What I would suggest is a clean install as you may find other things work that didn't before. It might also fix this problem you are having.

Copy everything off C drive you want to keep (if you upgraded from 7, win 10 may want to delete all the partitions on the hard drive so copy everything off) before you start. If you have 2 drives, just put everything on other drive for now (when I mean everything I just mean your documents, and music and other things you don't want to lose, not programs as most of those need to be reinstalled). Steam/Origin games libraries can be reused. Ask me if you not sure.

Download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

change boot order in BIOS so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
follow this guide: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-windows-10-clean-install.html

when you reach the screen asking for licence, click "I don't have a key" and win 10 will continue to install and reactivate once finished

On the screen where you choose where to install win 10, if it gives you an error about GPT drives, delete all the partitions on the hdd and press next. If it still gives error, cancel out of the installer and restart PC and start installer again, it will accept next on that screen this time (some PC just need a restart here)

 

[Sourjyaraj]

There was no windows 7 or windows 8 on this laptop....from the moment i bought it i am using win10 and i had clean boot windows 10 before this problem happened(it was the IT guy from my town who had installed it for me)everything was perfect I could play as much as I want....


I think my laptop is only uefi and gpt partition style and it doesn't work on legacy boot.according to Acer support(though the option for legacy is still there)...so I created a USB drive bootable with rufus. And got all my files backed up on my external hdd.so should I go for a clean install now?starting from the scratch?

 

[Colif]

If you have everything saved you want to keep, yes. clean install is better than being on 1st version of windows 10. Tell IT guy to update his USB as he has an old version of windows still.

follow that tutorial, it should answer all your questions

I give people the same advice, i can't tell if they know about windows using GPT or what was on PC before, so I cover the areas people have had problems with before

 

[Sourjyaraj]

Yeah!! The given link is great .I don't have any questions though. And yeah I had known these GPT partition style Uefi boot and other stuffs cz I did some digging before posting here

 

[Sourjyaraj]

these are the screenshots of task manager .. please take a look..


https://ibb.co/nGgDqk

https://ibb.co/nLYtqk

https://ibb.co/kjzNi5

clean installed windows 10 but still same problem ..at first everything was right ... after playing for an hour ... this started to happen and there was random fps drop.at first when i started playing ' system' was using 50mb apx. gradually it grew larger and at some point it took upto 250+MB ..and used ram of bf3 decreased from 1100MB(apx) to 700+MB.

 

[Colif]

system controls memory management, if you playing a game the amount of memory system uses will increase as it swaps memory between page file and ram. Only real way to fix that is buy more ram (4gb isn't a great deal anymore) - are you running 32 or 64 bit windows?

2.8gb of usage isn't very much, though since you only have 4gb it sure chews chunks up.

Ram usage might also be high in the 1st week as windows needs to work out what you use and your normal habits, I found my ram usage was high for a few days after the last update but it has shrunk back down to fairly normal now. Its also busy downloading patches and apps from windows store.

 

[Sourjyaraj]

Yeah Due to superfetch laptops reads every activities i do on my laptop...and i have installed 64 bit windows 10 creators update 1703.superfetch was running before i did not disabled it when i got the device...and even yesterday when i formatted it i did not touch any registry value or services... I left all those settings untouched,and let system manage the device on its own.i got a system resource disk from acer,with drivers loaded on them(win10 64bit),installed those and there is nothing on my harddrive accept origin and bf3 and other hardware drivers.
Though as i said before...i wasn't get any of this some days back.a virus problem messed up my system forcing me to clean boot the system.and after formatting the device .....this started to happen.....and i did clean install win10..but no luck.upgrading ram is not a best idea for me cz i don't want to void my laptops warranty by opening back cover...so now i am helpless..cant play games for one hour ....lag spikes are eating the game up...and it was never like this before...

 

[Colif]

pretty amazed they still make laptops with only 4gb of ram, but you say it worked fine before the virus and you have clean installed twice since then so its unlikely to be the virus still

one fix i saw for stuttering was to remove the page file off the drive game is on, but that won't help if you only have one drive in PC
some people blame the creators update but it was doing this before update on your PC - we updated trying to fix it.
could be the graphics card - some advice here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/pc-stutters-how-to-find-where-it-comes-from.2504248/

 

[Sourjyaraj]

1.i was on 10240(no problems were there)
2.vairus attack happened
3.had to hard reset to get the laptop going
4.virus problem didnt go away after reset
5.downloaded Windows creators update.
6.did a clean install(problem found)(bf4 was using 2.9 gb ram)(there was no trace of system memory leak)
7.clean installed win 10 pro 10240 problem was still there (when i reported this on this forum ntoskrnl.exe ram leak)
8.installed creators update yesterday and after some time about an hour playing bf3 same problems happened of which i have uploaded the screenshot.( ntoskrnl.exe hogging ram by decreasing allotted ram for bf3 as result there is stuttering)

 

[ex_bubblehead]

As already stated, 4GB RAM just isn't enough to go around, that's the root cause of your issues. Upgrade to 8GB and you'll see a definite improvement.