Someone is eating my memory!!!!

[ShadowPho]

This problem is only occuring on my smallest lappy. I think its because of FF memory leak. After I close FF, there is stil 1.4 gigs of memory being taken, and if i try to shut the laptop down, it still doesnt do it unless i hold the power button.
Here are the specs:

Inspiron 300m
1.2 GHz CPU
376 RAM
Intel Integrated Video Card
Windows XP

[aaa]

Taskmgr, sort by memory usage.

[ShadowPho]

I did, thats my second screenshot! Notice that the top part tells me there isn't 1.4 gigs used, but the bottom one does.

[orionlion82]

ive seen this in a few places on platops with little ram.

first, silently dead programs. some parts of windows die hidden and another is started to replace it automatically.

second, malware - could be anything.

third, programs intended to monitor the usage of the computer.
especially ones that record every keystroke and take a screenshot every 60 seconds or so. (usually uncompressed) - - with these programs, you can add as much ram as you want, and increase the pagefile to sizes beyond stupid, and it will eat it all right up. "ghostlog" comes to mind... with these sorts of programs memory usage increases with uptime untill the system totally chokes.

[Derek8819]

Onboard Video card using any memory?

[BossBorot]

Someone is eating my memory!!!!

I know whose eating your memory, it's that darn Ram Monster again!

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/9349/rammonsterdr0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[ShadowPho]

ive seen this in a few places on platops with little ram.

first, silently dead programs. some parts of windows die hidden and another is started to replace it automatically.

second, malware - could be anything.

third, programs intended to monitor the usage of the computer.
especially ones that record every keystroke and take a screenshot every 60 seconds or so. (usually uncompressed) - - with these programs, you can add as much ram as you want, and increase the pagefile to sizes beyond stupid, and it will eat it all right up. "ghostlog" comes to mind... with these sorts of programs memory usage increases with uptime untill the system totally chokes.

Wow, thanks!
I downloaded Adaware + spybot, booted into safemode, cleaned it all out and now its fine!
But now I will have to do a complete sweep on all of my PCs. Hopefully my ebay/pp accounts are safe. :)

[Janglur]

I'd like to revive this to note that you only show 384 MB of RAM there, of which all but 70MB is free. Semi-normal for windows XP.

It says it's using 1.4 GB of PAGE FILE, which is NOT memory. This is a part of your HDD that it being used like memory, because you don't have enough memory. Standard windows behavior is to leave this open for a program after it closes, for a time dictated by the program.
I suggest getting more memory to reduce the pagefile use (and hard-drive thrashing)

[Janglur]

Also, a sidenote:

Go up to view - Select Columns, and choose 'Virtual Memory Size' to view how much memory each program is using of page-file.