"PC running low on memory" seems to have killed my entire system

[TCobra]

Hello guys!
I really hope someone can help me out.

Here's what happened:
I was playing GTA V, and suddenly I get thrown out to the desktop where it says "PC is running low on memory. Close some programs to release memory". It asked me if I wanted to automatically close GTA, cause that was what used the most memory. I said "no" and wanted to close some programs myself, to free memory space.

When I attempted to tab out and close some programs, my entire PC stopped responding basically. Windows itself didn't respond (couldn't press the windows icon in the button left) and my programs ran painfully slow.

I decided to shut down my PC and go to bed. Now fast forward to today, I come home, turn on my PC, and the first thing I notice is that it's taking forever to even start the PC. It took about 5 mins just to log in, which normally takes 30 seconds max.

When I finally got to the desktop, nothing was working. It turns out that it was loading the startup programs. So I gave it a bit of time to do so. After 20 minutes, it still had not loaded all the startup programs it would normally do in 1-2 minutes.

All of my programs are still painfully slow. It takes 3-5 minutes to open a program, and once you get in every action takes 30 seconds.

Example: google chrome took about 5 minutes to open, and just loading a web page takes about a minute, where it normally would take less than 5 secs. I can confirm it is not a problem with my connection, as its working fine on my mobile phone and other PC's in my house.

Everything worked fine until I received the "Running low on memory" error, that's why I suspect that is what caused it.

My PC is only about 1 year old, and it has a lot of really new parts, brand new 2TB SSD, and GPU.

It is also weird to me that I ran out of memory since I have 16GB 2400mhz memory.

If anyone can help me that would be greatly appreciated. I can't really seem to identify the problem myself, other than that error message I got.

TL;DR: My PC got the "low on memory" error, and since then it has been slow as hell and barely working.


MY SPECS:
Case: Corsair Carbide Air 740
CPU: I7-6700K 4.0GHz
Motherboard: Z170 Pro Gaming
GPU: MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X at 2126MHz
Memory: 16GB DDR4 2400MHz Ram
PSU: 650W EVGA GOLD Power Supply
Storage: WD Black 2TB hard drive, 256GB Samsung SSD, 2TB MX300 Crucial SSD.

 

[Atomicdonut17]

Have you checked to see that your computer identifies all DIMM slots, along with the corresponding RAM? Make sure it says you have the full 16gb. Also, when running something, open Task Manager and see what your system does.

 

[TCobra]

Have you checked to see that your computer identifies all DIMM slots, along with the corresponding RAM? Make sure it says you have the full 16gb. Also, when running something, open Task Manager and see what your system does.

Yeah, I have 15.97GB of ram available. Nothing on my system is using more than 300MB. When I'm just sitting idle with only some antivirus programs, chrome, and discord open, I'm using 35% of my memory. Is that high?

Also after restarting the PC multiple times, it seems it's been getting faster. It's not quite as fast as it used to be though. This is really weird to me.

 

[Atomicdonut17]

That's 5 gigs of system memory being used on idle. I have 8gbs in my own system and it never uses more than a gig in idle. Are you absolutely sure that your system isn't running something intensive in the background? Have you dedicated any amount of the RAM towards your system's iGPU/VRAM? That could contribute, but even then, it should only be a 'temporary lend'. >.>

 

[Colif]

memory to windows is not just ram, you can run out of memory with 15gb free ram if something is eating your page file instead.

have you adjusted your page file size at all?

you can 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 memory usage of each part so you can see what is eating your memory

Private bytes = actual ram usage
Working set = Ram + page file usage << likely to be where problem is showing


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.

its likely a driver leak. a driver thats asking for memory and not releasing it once its finished, so PC runs out of memory.