RAM varies on computer start

[Squiffyk7]

This is a problem that exists both on my old laptop and my newish pc, and its an unusual issue. What happens is, on starting my computer, the processes that run use up a lot more RAM than other times I start up my pc. It's a bit hard to explain, so I have pictures:



This is what my RAM looks like 30% of the time I switch my PC on. If I restart a couple of times, my RAM looks like this:



I do nothing different to get these results for my RAM usage, it's just a probability when switching on my pc, and it seems a very mysterious problem, and I've so far been unable to find the solution online. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

 

[IDontUnderstand]

I woudn't consider this as an issue, I believe it's normal as there are different background processes starting every time when you boot up. There could be an actual update this time and not the other. There could have be scheduled PC cleaning upon boot up, sometimes there is none.

 

[Squiffyk7]

So this happens on all PC's? I mean sometimes its that bad I can't play a game with moderate fps/

 

[IDontUnderstand]

It is normal on start up, not all that normal after 10 minutes.
Did you obverse the RAM spikes at the beginning of boot up or only during game?
Monitor your RAM usage during game.
How much RAM are you running on?

 

[Squiffyk7]

I use 8GB of RAM and I run a moderate gaming pc with an SSD, so start-up doesn't take long at all. These RAMs will remain until the PC is switched off.

 

[IDontUnderstand]

Try reseat RAM
Run Memtest86+ for a few hours
www.memtest.org

 

[Tradesman1]

Well it can tie things up a bit, AVG is one of the processes, often at startup, it loads all it 's stuff then immediate goes to it's wenb site and does it's update, also see skydrive out there, it's going to connect and go through it's sync thing, no doubt you have adobe apps like Flash and reader, they may be fighting to check for updates, etc, could go into some of the service and rather leave them on auto set to delayed

 

[Squiffyk7]

So what possible solutions are there? Is this a common problem? I've not heard of anyone else having this sort of issue. I just find it weird that the same thing also happened on my old computer. If it helps, this is what my start-up looks like:



My ram is currently over 80% and I've restarted about 5 times, also I'm not to sure what this "Memtest86+" thing is.

 

[IDontUnderstand]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/286696-30-memtest

 

[Squiffyk7]

I ran the memtest overnight for roughly twelve hour - no erorrs where found. Therefore this must be some software issue?

 

[IDontUnderstand]

Restart your system with internet being cut off and just monitor the idle RAM usage via Task Manger. Post a picture of the usage after 30 minutes.

 

[Squiffyk7]

Well it's hard to test as the chance my computer will switch on with high ram or low ram usage is utterly random. Since I ran the memtest, my ram usage has been around 20% and i've done about 5 restarts since then. The two days before the memtest the ram usage was always over 80%. I know that memtest doesn't really fix problems, but do you think in this case the memtest kicked my ram cards back into action? I'll update if my ram usage becomes high again. Meanwhile thanks for all the help, any other ideas are still welcome.

 

[IDontUnderstand]

I really doubt memtest86+ can fix anything, but as long as it works for now lol

Good luck.