what happened to my memory?

[cannondale06]

Well I have 2 gigs and know that more than just the physical ram use to show up in the task manager graph. In other words if I was using half my physical ram the graph was still below half if I had the paging file turned on. The only way it use to show just physical ram in that graph was if I had no paging file on. I have a 2345mb paging file set up so why is the task manger only showing the physical ram?

Also once I get to around 1.5 -1.6 ram usage my pc becomes useless because the other 400-500mb is cached. I know I have exceeded over 2gigs of ram in the past before it started getting slow so I dont understand why this started happening. :confused:

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/3549/58440352xr4.th.jpg (http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=58440352xr4.jpg)

[cannondale06]

anybody?

[cannondale06]

79 views and not one comment? is there some other forum that might be helpful for this type of topic?

[Catweazle]

cannondale, the Task Manager dialogue you've posted appears exactly as it does in all of my (default) Vista installs, and I've never seen it display any other way. Mine is currently showing a different pattern of CPU and memory usage, but then my rig is currently running a full system virus scan and attending to a heap of other stuff besides.


I can't understand what it is you expect should be different.

[cannondale06]

cannondale, the Task Manager dialogue you've posted appears exactly as it does in all of my (default) Vista installs, and I've never seen it display any other way. Mine is currently showing a different pattern of CPU and memory usage, but then my rig is currently running a full system virus scan and attending to a heap of other stuff besides.


I can't understand what it is you expect should be different. it was not like that a few days ago and I know this for a fact. I defragged the other day and turned off the paging file before doing so. when I turned the paging file back on it was normal and the little graph wasnt even a quarter way even though I was using nearly 1 gig when I checked. the only reason I looked yesterday is because my pc started slowing down during games that normally never gave me a problem. my pc is crapping itself when it gets to 1.6 gb memory usage where before it wouldnt slow down until it actually exceeded the physical amount of ram. in fact a few days ago I could put the little graph well over 2 gigs of ram where now I cant even get over 1.6 with my comp coming to a standstill. this is NOT normal and it just started doing this

I jus looked on my other comp that has just 384mb of ram and its graph is not enough half way full while using over 280 gb.

[Joe Average]

Looks perfectly normal to me for a Vista machine.

Leave it alone.

[cannondale06]

Looks perfectly normal to me for a Vista machine.

Leave it alone.please reread my last post. I have had the pc for over a year and it has NEVER been like that in the task manger unless the paging file was off. also please explain why my comp will not go past 1.67 anymore.

[DanW]

I jus looked on my other comp that has just 384mb of ram and its graph is not enough half way full while using over 280 gb.
This doesn't even make sense...what in the world are you doing to that machine which makes it need 280GB of memory? I'll assume that this machine is running Windows XP, which doesn't have a physical memory graph in Task Manager. That graph shows the pagefile usage, which may have been only "half way full".(assuming you mean 280MB, not GB)

[Joe Average]

He's got 2GB of RAM which is not enough to turn off the pagefile, period. He's got Vista as evidenced by the Task Manager (Resource Monitor, anyone? See that there?), and now he's having some issues with the fact that SuperFetch caches data in the background after all this time.

I don't see a problem here, folks, I really don't.

Aside from him disabling the pagefile, of course.

[cannondale06]

This doesn't even make sense...what in the world are you doing to that machine which makes it need 280GB of memory? I'll assume that this machine is running Windows XP, which doesn't have a physical memory graph in Task Manager. That graph shows the pagefile usage, which may have been only "half way full".(assuming you mean 280MB, not GB) what do you mean what am I doing? have you never used 280mb of memory in XP before?

yeah maybe Im getting the task managers mixed up and Vistas must only show physical memory but that doesnt explain why pc is stopping around 1.65 gb though.

[DanW]

what do you mean what am I doing? have you never used 280mb of memory in XP before?
You said GB (gigabytes...1024MB). 280GB is a lot of memory.

yeah maybe Im getting the task managers mixed up and Vistas must only show physical memory but that doesnt explain why pc is stopping around 1.65 gb though.
Err, maybe because it only needs to use that much memory? The rest of your memory is being cached like it should. I just don't see where the problem lies.

[ryan_975]

The task manager in Vista has always graph just the physical memory.

Here's mine:
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4517/memorygraphnw8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My computer starts thrashing when I hit 1.6-1.8GB used as well.

(I know my sig says 4GB, but I had to take 2GB out to fix another computer.)

[cannondale06]

You said GB (gigabytes...1024MB). 280GB is a lot of memory.

Err, maybe because it only needs to use that much memory? The rest of your memory is being cached like it should. I just don't see where the problem lies. well sorry for the typo then because I meant mb of course.

The task manager in Vista has always graph just the physical memory.

Here's mine:
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4517/memorygraphnw8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

My computer starts thrashing when I hit 1.6-1.8GB used as well.

(I know my sig says 4GB, but I had to take 2GB out to fix another computer.) ok thanks. yeah I got the XP and Vista task managers confused for a bit. we have 3 comps and two of them are XP.


my pc has 2 gb but once I get to 1.65 gb or so it just stops and I cant do anything else and I have said that at least 3 times now. it wont open anything else at that point. so why is it caching the other 400mb and not releasing it? I know that it did not do this before because I have alt tabbed out of games in the past and the task manger was much closer to 2gb usage.

[GORANKAR]

It looks normal to me as well. I have 8gigs and it only goes to 1.52gigs on the green bar right now. Just over 6 gigs cached, 17megs free, and I guess the rest is being used for something else.

[ryan_975]

well sorry for the typo then because I meant mb of course.

well my pc has 2 gb but once I get to 1.65 gb or so it just stops and I cant do anything else and I have said that at least 3 times now. it wont open anything else at that point. so why is it caching the other 400mb and not releasing it? I know that it did not do this before because I have alt tabbed out of games in the past and the task manger was much closer to 2gb usage.

There's more to the cache than superfetch. Some things cannot be paged out of RAM. If there is something wrong with your system, it might help to post a full process list.