RAM slowly fills up.

[Peter Jason]

I have Win7 SP1 & 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault? I am always
downloading movies, eMule & Bittorent stuff and images.

Peter

 

[Char Jackson]

I have Win7 SP1 & 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

First, I doubt that the computer is increasing its RAM usage on its
own. If you reboot the computer and don't use it at all for several
days, it'll likely be humming along at the 15% you mention below. In
other words, RAM usage increases because you're using the computer. In
that respect, it's completely normal.

Second, RAM is there to be used. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Sure, you
wasted some money populating 12 GB of RAM, but what's done is done.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault?

It happens because you're using the computer.

I am always
downloading movies, eMule & Bittorent stuff and images.

It looks like some adult supervision is called for in order to curb
those bad habits, but that's outside the scope of this newsgroup.

 

[Paul]

I have Win7 SP1 & 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault? I am always
downloading movies, eMule & Bittorent stuff and images.

Peter

You had a problem with CHKDSK using up all the RAM on the computer
didn't you ?

What happens if right now, with the RAM usage at 50%, you were to
run CHKDSK ? After CHKDSK is finished and has exited, is the memory
usage seen, lower than 50% ? The idea would be, CHKDSK could be
used to "put the system under memory pressure" and if the memory
usage can be "purged" on request, you'll get the memory back.

Paul

 

[richard]

I have Win7 SP1 & 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault? I am always
downloading movies, eMule & Bittorent stuff and images.

Peter

open task manager and check processes. I'll bet you'll find one open for
emule and bittorent. Even though you have the program closed down.
Resource hogs like mcaffee and symantec av will do it too.

 

[Stan Brown]

I have Win7 SP1 & 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault? I am always
downloading movies, eMule & Bittorent stuff and images.

One or more applications, or Windows itself, have what is known as a
memory leak. This is a careless programming practice in which a
piece of software gets some memory but then forgets to give it back
when it has finished with it.

It's one reason that rebooting Windows occasionally is a good idea,
even when nothing is overtly wrong.

But are you actually experiencing any performance problems? Unless
you're doing some high-intensity computing, I wouldn't think 50%
usage should be a noticeable problem in itself. I mean, that leave
you with 6 GB unused, which is probably more than most people have in
total.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I have Win7 SP1& 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault? I am always
downloading movies, eMule& Bittorent stuff and images.

Peter

Open up Task Manager, and tell it to view processes from all users. Then
descending sort the display on the Memory (Private Working Set). You'll
find your culprit(s). One of the biggest consumers seems to be the
Windows service known as Svchost. Svchost is an operating system
component that acts as a go-between for almost every other process using
system resources. It's involved in network activity, disk activity, etc.
It looks like after awhile, as processes keep using it, and then stop
using it, this process may not give up all of its memory back.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Big Steel]

I have Win7 SP1& 12GB of RAM.

I leave my computer on for days at a time and the RAM keeps increasing
steadily until it reaches 50%.

When I cold boot the computer it settles down to about 15% before
slowly increasing again over the next few days.

Why does this happen and is it a sign of some fault? I am always
downloading movies, eMule& Bittorent stuff and images.

Peter

You can use Process Explorer and look around to see what is happening.

<http://windowsfixup.com/2009/06/speeding-up-windows-7-with-process-explorer/>

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545021

 

[DeeJay1981]

I have the same problem. I've left my computer on for hours on end before with the RAM usage being only about 17%. Then when I come back it's gone up to 25%. Remember this is without usage. How would memory get used without user interaction and without any virus or trojan infection?

*EDIT* I've even checked the process explorer with the "all users" box checked and not seen the total RAM usage, as well as checking the resource monitor in the task manager and haven't seen that kind of RAM usage. It's almost like RAM is getting used my nothing. Of course, restarting my computer fixes it, but I almost feel like there's a memory leak or something else going on.