Too much RAM "in cache"

Question

I am having the following problem: I am having a completely new Notebook with 8 GB RAM and Windows 8. I do not use software that requires a lot of RAM and I do not have a thousand programs running. Despite, Windows keeps on complaining about the fact that I would not have enough RAM available. When I checked this via Task-Manager I saw that I only used 1.5 GB RAM and the rest was "used as cache" whatever this means.

My question is now: Is there any way to get my RAM from this cache-guy back?

Solution 1

Clear your ram cache with RAMMap's emptystandbylist option.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx

Alternatively, wj32 (writer of Process Hacker at sourceforge) has written a small cmdline app to do the trick. Find it in this thread.

http://forum.sysinternals.com/rammap-empty-standby-list_topic27297.html

Have not found a way to do this from Powershell yet, but if you are a good programmer you can find what you need in the source code of Process Hacker.

Solution 2

Cache is largely adopted as a normal behavior in modern systems.

The general concept is that the system should actively and preemptively choose certain components DLLs, programs, sites, search results, and keep then in specific areas of memory marked as cache.

This concept as adopted because you system being awake, means that you are providing energy to keep this memory active, so you should use it all, all the time, but EVERY bit in a cached space, is immediately available if a process need it. Whee you starts a program and it says you haven't enough memory, that take into account that all cached memory could become free, but even in that case the memory your program need won't become available.

To solution your problem, you should search the program you are trying to run with the message you received.

Comments

[David Schwartz]

Can you be more precise about what you mean by "keeps on complaining"? What is the exact error message you are seeing and what program, if you know, is generating it?

[miggy]

Aside from the pre-installed programs, have you installed any other programs, lately?

[magicandre1981]

Run the linked RAMMap when you get the issue, store the data as a RMP file, zip and upload the file (dropbox, skydrive)