[SOLVED] Part of RAM dissapears, Memory leak?

[Krays]

I have 16 GB of ram, but when i use my pc, a part of it just disappears? (RAMMap shows that 10 gb of ram is process private while i can see only ~6gb used by processes?)
I already ran antivirus scans (Maybe there is just too many processes and im bad at math?)
Is there a way to check all this stuff?
(Sorry if my english is bad)
RAMMap screenshots

 

[Colif]

memory leaks are normally drivers, they don't show in processes.

Download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

the default view is tree structure meaning like your task manager screen, it will show what processes are under each service, but unlike task manager, it shows the ram usage of each part so you can see what is eating your ram

Private bytes = Ram + page file usage
Working set = actual ram usage

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click headers and run an av scan from within the program.

just curious as none of the processes appear to be using what you say is missing

 

[Krays]

Im just really confused when i look at task manager and see that 11 gb are in use while top processes use 2.5, 1gb of ram
Process explorer and task manager screenshots
so all these processes add up to 11gb of ram?

 

[Colif]

it looks like a driver leak. Look at Driver WS on your last picture,
it shouldn't 4gb just for drivers WS alone
Yours

mine with more actual ram

spot the differences
Commit charge - this is the total amount of memory the PC has, your peak is only 2gb below your Limit. Windows can't go past the limit, it will start to close parts of itself and anything it doesn't need to stay under limit. Driver leaks don't care and just eat the ram when they can

I bet the 4gb of drivers used goes down on a restart (not shutdown/start, I mean the restart action in power options) and slowly grows over rime.

Okay, what shows in file summary tab of RAMMAP if you sort by the three choices - Total, standby or Active - not sure what they all mean but give me somewhere to start

What are specs of the PC? What motherboard do you have?

Probably need to run Poolmon
explaining how to use it depends on how much time you have.

this might help as its right to point and shows where to get it from and basic steps

this might help as its a list of what the tags mean - https://github.com/zodiacon/PoolMonXv2/blob/master/PoolMonX/res/pooltag.txt

if you need help with output, let me know as you will find most of the parts on report are windows and its figuring out what is wrong that is fun part. Some parts of windows use lots of ram as they manage the ram.

 

[Krays]

My specs:
mobo: ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4
ram: G.Skill TRIDENT Z RGB [F4-3200C16D-16GTZR] 8x2GB (in bios I set XMP profile, didn't touch anything else)
cpu: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X OEM

Also i updated to windows 11 (i had some hope that maybe it will fix something)
and this is really weird, maybe it has something to do with windows 11, but when I checked memory usage in process explorer, driver WS usage looks normal now?

RAMMap, process explorer and poolmon screenshots
I just played battlefield 5 so it makes sense that a lot of it appeared in file summary?

My brain hurts when i try to process all that, so I'll really appreciate your help, thanks for helping with this stuff.

 

[Colif]

how did you update? through insiders or via an ISO?

If you updated via insiders it should still be using same drivers so how often do you restart your PC? If its a slow leak it might take time to get to what it was before.
if you use an ssd, do you have fast startup turned on?

now its lucky i happen to be on 11 as they have yet to add a shortcut in power options to the control panel for fast startup
search for control panel
change view to large icons
choose power options
click choose what the power button does
click change settings that are currently unavailable
untick turn on fast startup

fast startup only useful if you have a hdd as boot drive, it doesn't help nvme or ssd.

I wonder if control panel will still exist by time 11 is released.

 

[Krays]

I updated through insiders
usually i restart my pc once a day (powering up at the morning, shutting down at night), but sometimes i forget to turn it off
at the moment when i took last screenshots pc was running for 10 hours

I have nvme, and fast startup was on, turned it off

 

[Colif]

With fast startup on, your PC wasn't actually off on shutdown, it was in a hibernate state.
On shutdown, PC saves copies of any running drivers into ram or the hiberfil.sys file.
When you start PC again, its actually just waking up and its much easier to load things from ram than all from storage**
It also means that if a driver is eating ram, it will keep that ram on next start and can slowly eat it over a period of weeks until you get a windows update which includes an actual restart operation.
The only time a PC with fast startup on is actually off is during a restart.

**NVME is so fast you don't notice the difference. I never have it on.

 

[Krays]

well i guess i really needed to restart my pc more

Spoiler

So what do i do now?
I guess i need to somehow monitor what eats ram over time?

 

[Colif]

Just use pc normally and yeah, see if it starts again. Upgrading might have fixed it
I assume poolmon works in 11. We will have to find out.

 

[Colif]

this might help if we need to use poolmon as its from a previous time I used it

what you need to do from here is look at the tags with the most difference between allocs and frees, as that shows what is holding memory

also, might help to get a report at idle and one when its almost full to see what difference might be.

this page shows what most of the tags mean - https://github.com/zodiacon/PoolMonXv2/blob/master/PoolMonX/res/pooltag.txt

also, you only need to look at non paged
Paged= in page file, on hdd/ssd
Non Paged= Still in ram. Since tis ram that expands it means we only need to look at half the tags.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/ram-leak-or-im-missing-something.3677490/#post-22149003