Overly High memory usage in windows 10

[mohitakundi]

While using my laptop recently, i noticed something weird.The memory usage with nothing open is almost always above 46% and using chrome only makes matters worse(60% usage with 1 tab open and 90% with 4 more)
The specs are as follows:
i3 5010u 2.1GHz
Geforce 930m 2GB DDR3
RAM: 4GB 1600 DDR3L

Now, i used another laptop, a Dell with a sandy bridge i3 and 4GB 1300mhz memory
Same windows version and the idle usage was 22%

Although win10 is a resource hog, 46 % at idle is unacceptable.Also, i have no programs in startup(Disabled them all) and no random unnecessary programs running in the background.
Not even an antivirus(Win Defender is good enough)
Is there any way to reduce the usage ? Buying ram is not an option due to the ridiculous prices

 

[xander.dec]

It might be a Windows 10 software issue in which it is being very inefficient. It could also be a ram issue but because it is a laptop it would be harder to find out if it is a hardware issue. Try using windows ram tester and check if anything has shorted. You can also try uninstalling crome because that is a huge memory hog. I know this is a big NO NO but try out Windows Edge. It has gotten a lot better from the explorer days. Hope this fixes your problem!

 

[SkyNetRising]

Chrome is a known memory hog. Want to have a lot of tabs open in chrome? Then there's no other way around to getting more ram.
Try a different browser. Firefox, Egde.

8GB of DDR3 SODIMM costs ~50-60EUR. Not so ridiculous. DDR4 costs significantly more.

 

[ledhead11]

As SkynetRising mentioned Chrome does eat a lot of ram due to it's sandbox strategy. Another issue is it being a laptop there could be any number of pre-installed bloatware(I saw how you said you disabled, but other than doing you're own OS install and making sure you get the drivers right, there's no way to know for sure) and also consuming ram. If Windows is updating(and the newest builds have been rolling out the last few weeks) that too will add. If it's doing a/v scans, again more will be used. I'm not by any means the biggest fan of 10 but honestly there's a lot of things that can cause ram usage besides it, even at idle. These days 4GB is basically a bare minimum for any modern day 64bit OS though. Even at idle 7,8, or 10 can use upwards of 2GB during various scenarios. Really recommend upgrading to 8GB. Another factor I learned about when I was upgrading our business laptops(about a dozen spanning 4 different models) is that laptop motherboards don't allocate ram all the same way. Pull up the system properties on both and see if they're different. One could be giving you more than the other.

 

[mohitakundi]

It might be a Windows 10 software issue in which it is being very inefficient. It could also be a ram issue but because it is a laptop it would be harder to find out if it is a hardware issue. Try using windows ram tester and check if anything has shorted. You can also try uninstalling crome because that is a huge memory hog. I know this is a big NO NO but try out Windows Edge. It has gotten a lot better from the explorer days. Hope this fixes your problem!

No issues in hardware for sure. Problem is, Edge seems to be consuming similar amounts of memory as compared to chrome and isn't as fast.
Also, looks like windows loves to feast on my HDD too. I am considering a clean reset, but i feel, downloading each and every driver and software again is too much of a hassle.
Is there no other culprit ?? Or is this just an inherent "Feature" of the fall creators update ??

 

[mohitakundi]

As SkynetRising mentioned Chrome does eat a lot of ram due to it's sandbox strategy. Another issue is it being a laptop there could be any number of pre-installed bloatware(I saw how you said you disabled, but other than doing you're own OS install and making sure you get the drivers right, there's no way to know for sure) and also consuming ram. If Windows is updating(and the newest builds have been rolling out the last few weeks) that too will add. If it's doing a/v scans, again more will be used. I'm not by any means the biggest fan of 10 but honestly there's a lot of things that can cause ram usage besides it, even at idle. These days 4GB is basically a bare minimum for any modern day 64bit OS though. Even at idle 7,8, or 10 can use upwards of 2GB during various scenarios. Really recommend upgrading to 8GB. Another factor I learned about when I was upgrading our business laptops(about a dozen spanning 4 different models) is that laptop motherboards don't allocate ram all the same way. Pull up the system properties on both and see if they're different. One could be giving you more than the other.

The laptop was bought with no os and i installed win10 by myself, so no bloat apart from essential drivers

 

[SkyNetRising]

Invest in more ram. Also get SSD for your laptops. It's essential to have SSD in a modern computer.

 

[ledhead11]

[/quotemsg]

The laptop was bought with no os and i installed win10 by myself, so no bloat apart from essential drivers

[/quotemsg]

Understood. No real answers for the ram other than what I mentioned above. Different CPU's can also have an affect due to architecture and speeds but I don't think that's the source. I saw what you said about Edge, and yes it too will eat Ram as MS is basically trying to recreate the sense of security many have with Chrome.

As far as the HD consumption there's a couple of things. If it's using that much ram then it's also likely that virtual memory is fairly active during all this. You could tweak it a little but I'm doubtful of what over all gains you get. I do recommend either using a cleaner like ccleaner or something similar to do a clean up. With ccleaner(might need the pro-demo version) there's an option to delete old installations of windows and it'd likely free 2-10 GB depending how many previous you may have. I'm pretty sure Windows has this option included now(I remember seeing it added a year or two ago to the free up space options).

If you really like this laptop I'd strongly recommend upgrading the ram. The 8GB kits are not usually that expensive, especially DDR3 1300mhz. It should become a bit more responsive and at the moment there's no indications MS OS's are going to get any smaller in the future. I've been watching them grow since 95 and since 7 they can be downright huge over time. Starting 20-30GB upwards of 60GB depending on installed features and old installs. Old school way was 2 4GB sticks but these days it doesn't really matter that much and a single 8GB would be fine unless it's significantly cheaper for the 2 sticks instead.

I also agree about the SSD. Seriously, do these 2 things and that puppy will feel like a new machine.

 

[xander.dec]

It might be a Windows 10 software issue in which it is being very inefficient. It could also be a ram issue but because it is a laptop it would be harder to find out if it is a hardware issue. Try using windows ram tester and check if anything has shorted. You can also try uninstalling crome because that is a huge memory hog. I know this is a big NO NO but try out Windows Edge. It has gotten a lot better from the explorer days. Hope this fixes your problem!

No issues in hardware for sure. Problem is, Edge seems to be consuming similar amounts of memory as compared to chrome and isn't as fast.
Also, looks like windows loves to feast on my HDD too. I am considering a clean reset, but i feel, downloading each and every driver and software again is too much of a hassle.
Is there no other culprit ?? Or is this just an inherent "Feature" of the fall creators update ??

I think your only option is to try a clean reset. I understand your pain. I recently did a clean reset because of a software issue in windows and it worked perfectly. I know how its annoying to install everything again but sometimes it has to be done. Like others mentioned investing in an external SSD is a good move as well. Getting more ram will help a lot too so it's more or less the time to uprgrade. Good luck

 

[mohitakundi]

I just figured, the superfetch service and Geforce Experience were responsible for ALL of this mess. Fortnite and PUBG are now a breeze to play. RAM AND Disk usage fell from 75 to 50 and 100% to 0% almost immediately when I disabled them

 

[ledhead11]

Glad you figured it out. I think it's the first time I've heard of super using that much in modern times. Sata II, USB2 days it wasn't that uncommon but seems pretty rare these days. Geforce, well sad to say I'm not surprised. It's their own kind of bloatware. I did notice with the latest driver straight from NV there's now an option to not install experience. Might want to give it a spin. Just make sure you grab the mobile version if you do. I've installed it on 3 of my rigs(2 desk and one laptop). I had to do a restart on 2 of them(both SLI rigs), initially it said the install failed but after the restarts all was good.

 

[mohitakundi]

Yeah, surprised me too, because super isn't that intrusive in my other lappy which is 6yrs old.
I guess Windows simply affects each system in a different and weird fashion

 

[hani_95]

i had the same problem just in case someone wondering it was a driver problem i used driver boosted and updated everything related to the network drivers and after restart the problem as gone i also used ccleaner