Vista Ultimate x64 seems to eat memory over time.

When I boot to vista, there is typically 1300mb/8189mb being used. Typically the stuff that I run is this.

opera
trillian astra
utorrent
outlook 2007
ultramon
winamp
logitech gamepanel manager (G15 keyboard)
vista sidebar with a few gadgets, but nothing serious.

Even if I shut outlook, utorrent, and trillian down...after 7 days of uptime, I'm rolling around 3500mb/8189mb. (yes, I have 8gb of ram) Is there something I can look at to see why the usage creeps up like that? Seems like I should be able to shut down the major programs being run and the usage should drop...

anyway. I currenly have 11 svchost.exe's running. 2 under NETWORK SERVICE, 5 under LOCAL SERVICE and 4 under SYSTEM. Is this a normal amount? One of the SYSTEM svchost.exe's uses 274,000k of memory, another uses 54,000k, and so on.

Computer runs fine, starts getting slow after 1.5-2 weeks of uptime, or if usage jumps into the 4gb-5gb usage range.

Thanks doods.

Vista is pre-loading your frequently used apps into memory for faster access. If there comes a time when you exceed xxxxMB(your free memory), Vista will dump the pre-loaded apps to give you access to the rest of your memory.

TheCheat said:

Vista is pre-loading your frequently used apps into memory for faster access. If there comes a time when you exceed xxxxMB(your free memory), Vista will dump the pre-loaded apps to give you access to the rest of your memory.

Click to expand...

That is not at all what he is referring to. The 'preloading' you speak of is the memory being used to cache everything. This will use as much as it physically can, which probably is approaching the full 8GB. This memory will not be reflect in used memory.

Cached memory and used memory, are two different things. He is talking about used memory. I'm basically experiencing some of the same, it might be a Vista issue, it might be a poorly written app that has a memory leak. I've found that firefox is pretty heavy on the memory if left open and will "creep" up.

Perhaps when SP1 gets released fully we can see if it still occurs.

Maverick0984 said:

That is not at all what he is referring to. The 'preloading' you speak of is the memory being used to cache everything. This will use as much as it physically can, which probably is approaching the full 8GB. This memory will not be reflect in used memory.

Cached memory and used memory, are two different things. He is talking about used memory. I'm basically experiencing some of the same, it might be a Vista issue, it might be a poorly written app that has a memory leak. I've found that firefox is pretty heavy on the memory if left open and will "creep" up.

Perhaps when SP1 gets released fully we can see if it still occurs.

Click to expand...

Unless he is using 15+ apps at once, I can't see him using all 8Gigs. And if you can provide a document stating that SuperFetch's background work is NOT reflected in used memory, I'd like to see it.

I've been running Vista x64 on my main rig since its release and I experience the same thing he does after 1-2 weeks. My ram usage reaches 2-2.5 of USED MEMORY-- the only explanation is that its SuperFetch and it has loaded my frequently used apps into memory. A restart unloads all those apps and after the reboot im at ~ 600MB of used memory.

TheCheat said:

Unless he is using 15+ apps at once, I can't see him using all 8Gigs. And if you can provide a document stating that SuperFetch's background work is NOT reflected in used memory, I'd like to see it.

I've been running Vista x64 on my main rig since its release and I experience the same thing he does after 1-2 weeks. My ram usage reaches 2-2.5 of USED MEMORY-- the only explanation is that its SuperFetch and it has loaded my frequently used apps into memory. A restart unloads all those apps and after the reboot im at ~ 600MB of used memory.

Click to expand...

Superfetch is reflected in cached memory. Is there really any ambiguity there? Turn off Superfetch and you will see what I'm talking about, there is no need to find sources on my own. You can see it very easily first hand.

Maverick0984 said:

Superfetch is reflected in cached memory. Is there really any ambiguity there? Turn off Superfetch and you will see what I'm talking about, there is no need to find sources on my own. You can see it very easily first hand.

Click to expand...

Hmm sorry, the app I was using to reflect memory usage must also include cached memory.

What gadgets are you using in your sidebar?

I dont think there are more then a few Microsoft approved gadgets and all of the cool ones are 3rd party freebies. Unfortunately alot of them are written with drag n drop programming utilities and as such the code is often not as clean as it should be. This can cause the great memory hole.

Check task manager and see which app is lowly getting larger over time. Like once a day do a screen capture so you can compare it after 2 weeks of uptime.