extremely high ram usage >1gb!

OnePound

Hi

When all im doing is surfing the net SpeedUpMyPC tells me i am using 1200mb ram which seems very high to me. A week ago it was running at 550mb which used up all my ram so i installed an extra gb and it seems my pc just wants to drain whatever i put in.

The main process according to TM is iexplore.exe using around 600mb mem.

Ive analysed my hijack this log and it says everything is safe.

My pc is around 8 years old and ive only got 10gb of 80gb hard drive space left plus Ive got a lot of software installed. I regularly 'maintain' my pc so id say its in good order.

Should i be worried about this ram usage and is there anything i can do to decrease it?

espresso

Would you be happy if it did not make use of the extra RAM that you fitted?

Windows will make use of available RAM.

kwikbreaks

Assuming this is windows it tends to use otherwise unused memory as disk cache. That said 600MB used by IE seems excessive to me. I've got 8 FF tabs open and that is using 170k. I have Vista home and that is showning me using about 1GB out of 2GB on the laptop - it is only browsing.

John_Gray

OnePound wrote: »

Hi
Should i be worried about this ram usage and is there anything i can do to decrease it?

As Espresso said, No!
If you put anything up to about 3.25 GB of memory in, Windows would still try to use all of it. (That's what it's for).

In this respect it is entirely unlike hard disk space.

posted_2

Maybe something to do with speedupmypc?

Try firefox, and use task manager to monitor ram usage.

OnePound

John_Gray wrote: »

As Espresso said, No!
If you put anything up to about 3.25 GB of memory in, Windows would still try to use all of it. (That's what it's for).

In this respect it is entirely unlike hard disk space.

Excellent My concern was that before I put the extra gig in my pc had started getting slow and initially after putting it in it was visibly faster. It now seems to have slowed down... I think. Not sure as the difference was small.

Im using IE with win XP (9 tabs currently open). I dont like firefox.

posted_2

You should look into it, if the pc is swapping, it will get slower.

OnePound

posted wrote: »

You should look into it, if the pc is swapping, it will get slower.

what does 'swapping' mean?

DatabaseError

Windows uses A LOT of memory..and it gets it from 1 of 2 places
1. RAM - Very fast
2. Virtual RAM/Swap file (AKA Hard disk drive) - Very slow

You get to chose which it uses the most of..I have 4Gb of ram in each of my machines because I want windows to use the fast stuff...I could remove 3Gb and allow windows to make full use of a swop file...but I really don't want to lose that much performance for the sake of a few quid!

I've never used "speed up my PC"...and hopefully never will....but...you have limited resources already...running and application showing you your limited resources is...er...limiting them even more (kinda reminds me of someone I knew years ago who got a large phone bill...so she called everyone to explain why she wouldn't be calling as much )

You're run HJT already and know your system is probably clean, download and run ccleaner including the 'issues' module, limit running programs (I have NO toolbars installed!) get a decent, lightweight antivirus solution (ditch norton/macrapee)...think of your Pc as an old sports car....it really can go as fast as when new (actually faster with the extra RAM) but you'll have to remove all the rubbish from the boot first!

aliEnRIK

Mines currenly using 1.7 gig of Ram (Out of 4)
Do I care? No ~ its using it efficiently which is why I WANTED the extra ram

cooki2222

has your ie have any addons installed?? honestly i would ditch ie and go with firefox it uses less ram and it 100 times more safe than ie by miles