Windows 8.1 64-bit: High memory usage

Question

I have 8GB of memory on a 64 bit windows 8.1 machine, and windows is telling me I'm using 91% of my memory, yet its simultaneously telling me I'm only using 3GB.

I literally just restarted my machine a few minutes ago because it was being incredibly rediculously slow. I'm currently only running chrome (with a ton of tabs, but doesn't add up to anywhere near 7.5GB). What could be going on here?

Here's a bunch of my current info

I took a look at this: How to find source of memory leak in Windows 7? but I wasn's able to use xperf and the rest didn't lead me to a solution.

UPDATE - RamMap:

UPDATE 2: I checked Resource Monitor at Wouter's suggestion and found an "Image" called lxdecoms.exe with over 6GB of Commt (KB). I tried killing the process, but while it lowered my Commit Charge, it didn't affect "Used Physical Memory". So I restarted hoping to capture it again in full, but its not back yet and yet the problem persists.

I should note that I do have a Centos virtual box virtual machine running on my machine, not sure if that has any weird memory impacts that aren't reflected in the numbers in these tools.

I got xperf working, so here's my resource monitor and a wpa analysis of my xperf output (from xperf -on ReferenceSet -BufferSize 1024 -MaxFile 512 -FileMode Circular && timeout 5 && xperf -d MemUsage.etl):

What is N/A that's taking up 2.7GB of memory? My VM?

Solution

The high memory usage comes from a high Page table and Driver Locked usage.

To see which processes causes the page table usage, install the Windows Performance Toolkit, open a command prompt as admin and run this command:

xperf -on ReferenceSet -BufferSize 1024 -MaxFile 512 -FileMode Circular  && timeout 5 && xperf -d C:\HighMemoryUsage.etl

Open the HighMemoryUsage.etl with Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA.exe), drag and drop the graph "ResidentSet" from the left graph list to the analysis pane:

Now move the "Page Category" column to the left side and expand the "Page Table" entry:

Here you see the processes which have the high pagetable usage. On the right site (after the blue line), you see page table memory usage in MB for each process.

The Driver Locked usage can be caused by Virtual Machines like Hyper-V. If this is not the case, use the Windows Assessment Toolkit to see which driver is causing the Drivers Lock usage:

Comments

[Ramhound]

You need to figure out the reason you can't xperf, we can't help, without that information

[Ramhound]

Possible duplicate of How to find source of memory leak in Windows 7?

[B T]

@Ramhound I'm getting the error "Cannot create a file when that file already exists." even tho I don't have any other performance tools open..

[Daniel B]

Please provide a screenshot of RAMMap.

[magicandre1981]

driver locked is also very high. trouble shoot it this way: superuser.com/a/1125553/174557

[magicandre1981]

look at my pictiure in the dup link. you use the wrong graph, use Residentset graph and order the colums like I did. yes, running VMs show as DriverLocked

[B T]

@magicandre1981 I have the Residentset graph right on top of that Analysis tab in the screenshot, don't I?

[magicandre1981]

oups, I only saw the memory list part while typing the comment. Move the "Page Category" column to the first place and expand the page table entry.

[B T]

@magicandre1981 Oh interesting. I didn't realize you could do that. This is really helpful and illuminating. Looks like crashplan is taking up at least 1.5GB, much of which isn't visible in windows' task manager. I'm sure there's other things in there, but that's really helpful. Make that an answer please

[magicandre1981]

I posted it as answer

[B T]

Tried it cause it was easy. It did indeed reduce my memory usage, but didn't solve or illuminate the problem. I was at that point using 1.5GB of memory and it told me that was 65% used up (while 1.5/8 is less than 19%). I wasn't the one that downvoted fyi

[Ramhound]

I was, and it's because this answer, is a comment

[Daniel B]

On the contrary – even with a single tab, Chrome will launch multiple processes. That’s to keep the browser from crashing etc.

[Wouter]

I also downvoted, because the information provided is wrong. Chrome is implemented to start a separate process for each tab opened. This way, one tab crashing doesn't crash the entire application. This is one of the great great things about Chrome...

[Wouter]

Also, the memory usage of Chrome does not add up to 7GB, so it's not relevant.

[B T]

There are no other users, so you're saying that the system is using the majority of my memory? I'd expect something to be very wrong to have happened to my system for that to be the case. Is something horribly wrong with my machine?

[B T]

I added a resource monitor screenshot

[Wouter]

Seems to me that CrashPlan, IDEA (IntelliJ JVM?) and Chrome are eating most of the memory. For Chrome this is normal, it likes using a lot of memory. Can't speak for CrashPlan and IDEA, as I'm not familiar with them. If you're not aware you are using CrashPlan, try uninstalling it. If you are, try googling on how to reduce its memory footprint, there seems to be lots of information out there...

[magicandre1981]

no, PageTable and Driver Locked is using the memory most. Both can't be seen in resmon ;)

[Wouter]

Looks like I need to read up on what PageTable and Driver Locked are :) I always thought all memory usage was "grouped" per running process in resmon, and nothing could fall outside of that.