How to enable memory compression Windows 10

Question

Recently I've been running programs that really like to soak up my system memory. So much that a lot of the time I don't even have a gigabyte left. This has led my system to hang and eventually crash quite often. I see in task manager there's a variable that tells me my compressed memory. I don't have it enabled, but from the sounds of it, it could solve my lack of memory issue until I buy more. How would I go about enabling Windows 10 memory compression?

Note: Yes, I've looked else where before posting, surprisingly I didn't find much, only things I found were to disable it for odd reasons.

OS: Windows 10 Pro

System Specifications:

CPU: Ryzen 7 2700X - 3.7GHz 8C/16T
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB - 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3466MHz
Mother board: MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon
Video Card: EVGA GTX 1060 - 3GB DDR5
Power Supply: EVGA 650W - EQ (80+ Gold)
1st Hard drive: Western Digital Red - 2TB 7200RPM
2nd Hard drive: Western Digital Blue - 1TB 7200RPM
3rd Hard drive: Samsung Evo 970 - 1TB NVMe M.2 (OS Drive)
Internet Adapter: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 - 450Mbit/s transfer

Solution

How would I go about enabling Windows 10 memory compression?

Memory compression is enabled by default. However, it appears for whatever reason, you currently have it disabled. Within a Administrator PowerShell command prompt type the following command to disable memory compression

Disable-MMAgent -MemoryCompression

Within a Administrator PowerShell command prompt type the following command to enable memory compression

Enable-MMAgent -MemoryCompression

Sources:

• Enable-MMAgent

• Disable-MMAgent

Comments

[David Schwartz]

"This has led my system to hang and eventually crash quite often." It's very unlikely that your system hanging and crashing has anything to do with memory use and thus very unlikely that it would be affected by memory compression.

[Admin]

@DavidSchwartz Memory leaks are not fun, and they can cause the system to crash. Compressing the memory should either give the program enough memory to ran properly or allow me enough time to close the program before the system crashes.

[David Schwartz]

If you have a real memory leak, the problem is the memory leak. And unless it's a kernel leak (in which case there's nothing to close) it won't cause a system crash. You are likely barking up the wrong tree. Do you have any actual evidence of a memory leak? (Memory in use is not evidence of a leak.)

[Admin]

@DavidSchwartz In any case this is my problem, not yours. I am just wondering how to enable memory compression. You do not need to know why I want to enable it.

[Anixx]

Memory compression only compresses cached data of SysMain service. It does not free any additional memory for your programs. Disabling SysMain service will remove all cached data altogether.

[Ramhound]

However, I feel it is important to point out that enabling memory compresion, WILL NOT, resolve your memory leak. Even with memory compression enabled, whatever is causing your memory leak, will conitnue to cause your issue. It just might take longer for the end result.