[help] Where does my memory go?

Hello everyone. I love interface tweaking, but the memory footprint and handle count of eye-candy programs is usually quite big so I spend a lot of time optimising them to run smoother.

Currently I`m stuck with a problem. I`m looking at Windows Task Manager and cannot understand why these two numbers are so different.

The red number is a sum of memory all program take that i calculated myself.

Where does all other memory go? Maybe there are some kingd of hidden processes that are not shown here?

P.S. Sorry for my english.

#335376

No, thats in "k" (kilobytes i believe), and the bottem is in megabytes.

#335381

man i would suggest you say byebye to Yztoolbar and, objectdock. Use styler toolbar and RKlauncher instead.

One more thing, your explorer.exe is acting weird :o 49MB :confused:

#335382

mine also acts weird its at 51 MB, anyone know what causes this or a solution???

#335389

Umm ditto on dumping Objectdock.

PS. His numbers still don't add up and isn't Explorer the problem in general!

mine also acts weird its at 51 MB, anyone know what causes this or a solution???

I use process explorer and am in no-way a programming expert but, it seems a lot of previous/unused processes get threaded underneath explorer and I just use a RAM cleaner to free up unnneccessary/unused process?

#335401

Ever add in the processes after clicking the chackbox at the bottom, its signifigantly more that what you have. Im positive.

#335432

my explorer used to be around 10M, right now it's taking me 3MB :P

#335434

Mine is @ 52, doesnt really bug me tho, 2gb of ram >_>

#335438

kind offtopic, but does anyone know why explorer crashes spontaneously with NO error message and returns?? this happens when closing a folder that was open say more than 10 minutes. or randomly rarely but still annoying.

i tried the microsoft link:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=883791

and explored any other forum with no solution to my problem, googled it I did everything no answer, I really hope someone knows the solution

#335442

The total charge also includes virtual memory, which is not shown under 'mem usage'.

#335484

my explorer used to be around 10M, right now it's taking me 3MB :P

i want a Screenshot or i call BULLSHOIT on this

i have noticed that hacked/aka modded .exe DO use up more system memory

im pushing 28.8 megs atm but thats the highest its been but i havent rebooted in like 2 week

#335499

The total charge also includes virtual memory, which is not shown under 'mem usage'.

AndreasV, I enabled one more column in this view and thats what I see now:

I turned off Virtual Memory to speed up my PC. So does that mean that explorer takes about 100MB? :slant: And Avedesk is also not 2,7 MB but almost 14 MB?

Why do programs take such a big part of Virtual Memory? They didn`t take so much before. It seems like growing.

By the way, AndreasV, could you please tell me what is "handle count". In some tweaking guides i`ve read that its much more important to keep handle count low then memory footprint for stable and lagless PC working. So I try to keep it below 5000 on start and 10000 on load. I guess you know much better then me these "handles" are, so maybe you could tell us more?

Ever add in the processes after clicking the chackbox at the bottom, its signifigantly more that what you have. Im positive.

This doesn`t work for me. I`m the only user of this machine and checking the box doesn`t show me any other processes.

my explorer used to be around 10M, right now it's taking me 3MB

Tell us about your optimisation technique, oh guru master

#335509

Hell, you've got a gig of RAM. It doesn't matter in Windows XP if you've got loads of free memory because of the way it manages it all. If a program, eg a game or Photoshop requests loads of RAM, Windows (and Mac OS, and Linux) tells other programs to free up memory. They can because they use memory that's available for all sorts of stuff, but they don't need it.

In essence, there's not a lot of point about worrying about memory usage any more. Free RAM is wasted RAM these days. Its processor usage you want to be worried about. If a process is using 5-10% CPU all the time, that's a significant drain on the system speed and responsiveness, much more than having less than 700MB RAM free. I discovered this when I ditched (an old version of) Sysstats which was using my processor all the time, my system went faster immediately.

#335518

Hell, you've got a gig of RAM. It doesn't matter in Windows XP if you've got loads of free memory because of the way it manages it all. If a program, eg a game or Photoshop requests loads of RAM, Windows (and Mac OS, and Linux) tells other programs to free up memory. They can because they use memory that's available for all sorts of stuff, but they don't need it.

In essence, there's not a lot of point about worrying about memory usage any more. Free RAM is wasted RAM these days. Its processor usage you want to be worried about. If a process is using 5-10% CPU all the time, that's a significant drain on the system speed and responsiveness, much more than having less than 700MB RAM free. I discovered this when I ditched (an old version of) Sysstats which was using my processor all the time, my system went faster immediately.

owenreading, i turned off the swap file and the system runs smoother now. But now I have to worry about memory, because I hate it when I install a new game or open 15 files in photoshop and get "out of memory" from programs. It happens sometimes and makes me think of buying 2Gb RAM. Thats why i`m so concerned about keeping my memory free. Because you never know what other programs you`ll have to run tomorrow.

#335522

I see what you mean about not wanting to run out of memory with that sort of setup. I have a laptop HD, which runs at 4200rpm and is the weak link in my system, so I hate to use it, but it keeps the system stable, and now I have a gig of RAM, Windows puts a lot less in there.

I leave the swap file set at a constant value, say 512MB or something, so Windows doesn't have to spend all its time making more swap space on disk/deleting it, which frags up the disk like hell, and takes ages to do. A constant value of swap file is probably the best setup for most people, it blends performance with ability to control memory for huge apps.

Also, another tip if you have two internal (IDE/SATA) hard disks is to create two swap files, one on each drive. Windows then can write data twice as fast to the swap file (striping), and read twice as fast thanks to the wonders of DMA. Even better if (as they really should be if you've got half a brain) they're set up on separate IDE channels.

#335547

It goes a bit far to explain all details of modern memory management models (mmmmm? ), since there are plenty of resources on the web.

#335550

Indeed. I'd consult them first, cos you can make your system amazingly snappy with just a few quick changes. The advantage of me typing the above answer(s) was that it was better than doing my uni work (quantum physics, fun ) and thus helped me kill some time

Also, wasn't it Apple that invented Virtual Memory (in system 7?) And doesn't Mac OS X use about 5GB for its virtual RAM? So for a proper emulation experience we should leave it turned on......

#335554

owenreading, I just made three 256 MB swaps on three drives I use. Lets see how this will work.

About windows memory model - I`m not a programmer and most of the information about this requires programming knowledge. I think there would be a lot of people to say "Thank you" if someone could translate these from programmers language to more simple consumer language. We don`t actually care about how it works, we care what numbers we should keep low to make it run fast and what numbers we should not care about.

I hear a lot of talks about what makes window run slower or faster but there is no one who can actually de-mystify this stuff for the masses.

#335576

Thanks for the post... Turned on Handles display and had to kill ieview plugin for Miranda... Now my PC seems more alive ))

#335597