Physical memory usage higher than it should be

[wobble57]

Hi I recently had to get a lot of new parts for my desktop including two 4gb RAM cards so I was expecting a much faster machine than previously when it ran on 4 1gb cards but instead even doing something like browsing the web is so slow to almost be unusable. Even when the computer is idle the physical memory usage is sitting at about 75%

Another thing i've noticed is that despite having 8GB resource manager says only 3583 is installed.

the image is a link to a screenshot of my resource manager

I'ld gratly appreciate any advace to help speed up my computer or find my missing RAM

 

[Ubrales]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums!

Is this a 32-bit system?

 

[alyoshka]

From the screenshot, it looks like you're using a 32Bit OS. That is not going to take any advantage of the extra RAM that you have in the rig greater than 3.5GB , that's one downside.
Secondly, you seem to be having the McAfee Shield working in the background and taking up a lot of resources, get a better anti virus and save resources... Not McAfee or Norton.....

Thirdly, you have hell of a lot of hardfaults..... you need to optimize those programs to write bigger amounts at longer time interval to the HDD. Caching and indexing do that a lot.

Reset the pagefile size according to windows and it should quicken up a little bit.

And if possible, shift over to a 64Bit OS.

 

[wobble57]

Hi, thanks for the advice.

I think I will upgrade to a 64bit windows 7 but as I already have windows 7 32bit is it possible to only buy 'Windows 7 Pro Upgrade 64-bit' rather than a full version and just do a custom install? I'm a student so it's far cheaper to buy the upgrade.

Could anyone also explain the hardfaults to me and pagefile to me? I'm computer savvy to a point but most of this goes over my head

 

[alyoshka]

No, on a Base OS which is 32Bit you cannot use an upgrade pack of 64Bit.
You will need to buy the 64Bit OS itself.

Pagefile is the part of the HDD that is used to cache data and programs. For faster use and access.

To change or disable it (Not Advisable)
Right Click MY Computer Properties---- Advanced Systems Settings ---- Performance Settings ---- Advanced---- Virtual Memory

Select the C Drive and click "No Paging File"
Then Select the D Drive and click Custom Size, enter Minimum Allowed & Recommended amounts in the two boxes. Both those values are specified at the bottom of the Tab.

 

[alyoshka]

Hard Faults----
"Monitoring the number of Hard Faults/sec will show how frequently a program needs to access the swap file, which could show if adding more memory would speed up applications.

When ever the CPU needs to access part of the RAM that has been swapped out, the memory manager unit (MMU) throws a "Page Fault" instructing the Windows kernel to swap an old page out of memory on to the Hard Drive and swap the required page back in to RAM. Hence, if you are out of RAM, the number of "Faults per second" will naturally rise.

The more ram you have in the system the fewer "hard faults" you would have. When a program is forced to use the page file it makes a hard fault. Less hard faults the better. This can be achieved by adding more ram.

Some times a program will use the page file anyways even if you do have the needed ram just sitting there. You can solve that issue by removing the page file altogether. Only do this if you have 4gb or more. I would only do it if you have 8gb though as removing the page file can slow down your system if you do not have enough ram in your system."----Escac