Why is my computer using so much ram?

Question

I have 16gb of ram installed in my computer, and nearly 70% of it is used at all times. Looking at the processes in task manager the memory being used with everything in there doesn't even add up to 2gb. I have RAPID mode enabled on my ssd which may be using 2gb at most so I would understand that. I am thinking there might be a memory leak somewhere, but I don't really know how I would be able to tell. My performance and process list is below:

Here is a picture of RAMMap:

Solution

The high memory usage comes from the large page table:

I've explained here, how to trace this.

also the nonpaged pool is too high. You can use poolmon to see which driver is causing the high pool usage.

Install the Windows WDK, run poolmon, sort it via P after pool type so that non paged is on top and via B after bytes to see the tag which uses most memory.

Now look which pooltag uses most memory as shown here:

Now open a cmd prompt and run the findstr command to see which driver uses this tag:

Now look at the file properties, find the driver version and look for an update.

Comments

[Ramhound]

Because your processes require the memory? Try booting to a minimal configuration your memory usage will go down.

[magicandre1981]

post some pictures of RAMMap: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx

[slhck]

Don't you want the RAM to be used? You bought 16GB, so be happy if the OS makes use of it rather than swapping stuff onto the hard drive.

[Ian]

@magicandre1981 here is a pic of RAMMap gyazo.com/089f0b471a056c28b13011a420fb6500

[David Schwartz]

This tends to be caused by virtual memory fragmentation. Usually, only a server reboot fixes it -- at least for a bit. With luck, your instructions will finger a specific driver.

[akira]

@magicandre1981: you are not explaining why you think the values are too high. in the rammap-screenshot i see 3.2gb mapped files, 300mb of it active. like in the other post: you are not explaining the why, just that some magic finding of "bad drivers" will decrease the nonpaged pool under a "magic barrier". please explain the why.

[magicandre1981]

@akira you drive me insane. As I told you in the other question, values over 100MB for page table are bad. I've look at so my Windows systems and did thousands perf analyses of Windows systems and the worst that I ever saw was 95MB page table size. And the normal nonpaged size on Windows is about 100-200 MB and not 2GB.

[akira]

no, you have not told "me" (you are not explaining things to OP btw), but just stated "mhh .. it's too high". you could have put this experience-blob in there, you have not. "paged / nonpaged pool" refers to driver memory, you have not put that there or here. 2gb of ram for drivers is high, no doubt. instead you posted a link to a huge wikipedia entry. that's why i am bringing this up: you post screenshots and provide recipes without the reason and some background information.

[magicandre1981]

I don't write poems. He wanted to know WHAT causes the usage, I told him this. If he wants more details he can ask a new question: "hat is XYZ"