Sudden drop in vista performance

[ugotpwned]

Hey Guys,

I was really hoping you guys could help me out with a problem I am currently having with windows vista. Vista for some reason is using essentially all of my RAM which is slowing my computer down/ affecting the performance. Furthermore, I believe that this is causing the high loads on my CPU because even if I open an application (like Firefox) the CPU spikes to 100%, whereas it never use to do that before.

I do consider myself fairly computer savvy but this problem has me stumped. I know how vista uses a lot of RAM and frees it up as programs are open or as more RAM is needed, but my computer never did this before. I have a dell Inspiron 1520 with a nvidia 8600gt video card and 2 gb of RAM. Even at idle with nothing but the background programs running or even on startup my RAM usage is at like 75% and CPU usage is high (but cpu usage eventually goes down whereas ram usage doesn’t). Like I mentioned before I never used to be that high, only in the past few days did it start happening. I have tried everything to pinpoint the problem but nothing seems to help. I tried uninstalling windows updates, updating all the drivers, installing older drivers, uninstalling my antivirus, running antispyware/virus scans, and defragging my hdd and nothing seem to help at all.

I would greatly appreciate your help as my computer is very important to me and use it all the time. Thanks!

 

[fowang]

for the ram usage, are there any processes using high ammount of system memory?
If not its the super fetch feature which is preloading apps which are used frequently.

 

[ugotpwned]

for the ram usage, are there any processes using high ammount of system memory?
If not its the super fetch feature which is preloading apps which are used frequently.

There really isnt any programs that are using a lot of system memory and the thing that stumps me is that the RAM useage is really high right off the bat, before I even start any programs. I dont think its super fetch because I never had this problem untill recently.

 

[fowang]

are there any apps you have started to use recently that could explain the jump in system memory usage?

 

[ugotpwned]

are there any apps you have started to use recently that could explain the jump in system memory usage?

No new apps or windows updates, which is why its so frustrating to me

 

[fowang]

try removing some startup apps, either there is somthing thats being triggered to do a scan on your computer of some kind, try running hijack this which will show you everything thats running and whats using your memory up.