Question Problem with nearly 100% memory used

Craig234

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Apr 23, 2006
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For a long time, my PC has gradually slowed in games, I've left it running days and weeks. I always figured it's just 'one of those things', stuff piling up, as I ran more things. A reboot seemed to fix it for a while.

Recently, it seemed worse. And now a reboot isn't helping; not running other programs, like games I might have launchers running the backgroud, Steam, Chrome - even not running those didn't help. For example, in a game it was bad performance stuttering constantly.

I took a look at task manager, and it showed 95-97% memory used. I rebooted, and 'clean', it still immediately showed 97% memory used. The biggest memory use it showed was malwarebytes at about 75MB. Nothing to explain it.

I was advised to run "resmon", and it showed the same thing, but it was noted that PIDs were high, and that there have been problems with Malwarebytes running a lot of zombie processes filling memory.

I tried to disable malwarebytes in services, but it gets a popup 'access denied'. I exited malwarebytes as a first test to see if it had an effect, it didn't. So I rebooted.

On reboot, despite changing malwarebytes to disabled not working, it didn't start. But the situation is the same, memory used 97%-99%, biggest process was 'Windows Explorer' at 47MB (not sure what that is, I don't run the browser). I could post task manager/resmon screenshots if there's a way to upload them (file sharing site if needed but haven't had them work well).

Resmon had a couple windows/charts for memory usage and 'hard faults'.

After the reboot, both went from black/zero, to all green/100% at once and stayed there.

Basic configuration is i7-4790K, 16GB RAM, SSD boot drive with 150GB free, 6TB hard drive with a bit over 300GB free.
 

Craig234

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I'd like only 'friendly' replies. If that's an issue, let's save us both a headache.

rgd1101, thanks for replying. Can you be specific what info you'd like that's relevant to the symptom? Edit: rgd1101's reply is gone. I'll assume it's for the best.
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
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Have you scanned for a virus? I realise you have Malwarebytes but a 2nd opinion never hurts - try the trial - https://www.hitmanpro.com/en-us

I took a look at task manager, and it showed 95-97% memory used. I rebooted, and 'clean', it still immediately showed 97% memory used.
Is this after the restart command in power menu?
if you are restarting and its still using most of your ram, its strange. memory leaks take time to grow, most don't eat all your ram at startup.

what motherboard do you have?

most memory leaks are caused by drivers, not programs. 75mb isn't enough to account for 97% ram usage so its clearly a driver not releasing ram after use.

what is usage like in safe mode
  1. go to settings/update & security/recovery
  2. under advanced startup, click restart now button
  3. this restarts PC in a blue menu
  4. choose troubleshoot
  5. choose advanced
  6. choose startup options
  7. click the restart button
  8. choose a safe mode (it doesn't matter which) by using number associated with it.
  9. Pc will restart and load safe mode
Often the culprit is LAN drivers so updating yours could help.
There are ways to identify it,

You probably need to run poolmon, it shows what is using memory on the system
video shows how to run it,
The top line of description in the video has command you use to identify the tag, I can't copy it here as forums will play with its formating
You need to download the windows Driver toolkit - link - as it includes poolmon

You want to find the tag that is using the biggest difference between Allocs & Frees as these are the processes keeping memory and not giving it back. Leaks are caused by software requesting memory and not giving it back when its finished.

Many of the processes are actually parts of windows as you can see the processes that manage memory here, so some will always have a lot. This is normal. You want to look at non Microsoft tags

This is a list of the most common tags - https://github.com/zodiacon/PoolMonXv2/blob/master/PoolMonX/res/pooltag.txt

I would run program just after boot, to get a baseline for usage and something to compare to when ram usage is massive
screenshots can help. uploading to an image sharing website and show links heree for any you want help with.
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
He just mentioned whats running in Task manager, mbam using 57 mb is hardly a lot or sign its doing anything apart from being in background. i don't have it installed currently but that sounds about right for the processes size.

He was playing whack a mole with applications when really they weren't the problem

I could post task manager/resmon screenshots if there's a way to upload them (file sharing site if needed but haven't had them work well).
 
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Craig234

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Thanks for responses, I'll add more but there is some update. It was seen that the Process ID numbers were over 200K which is an issue. I ran Microsoft Defender Offline check, and whatever it did, it changed things. Instead of 95%+ memory used all the time, it went to 60%-80%, which is still high but far better. It didn't seem to issue a report - it says it doesn't even have a record of the scan.

The MB is ASRock Z97, strange that Device Manager doesn't seem to have an entry for MB. Yes, had scanned Malwarebytes before, it found 9 relatively harmless things I quarantined and had no effect.