High RAM usage not adding up

Hi,

I had a good search over the web and I only saw posts of people worrying that their idle usage was showing 29% with 4GB of RAM.

WELLLLLL, my idle appears to be using a tad more:


I'm using the same programs as my old system which also had the same amount of ram (2x4GB 1600MHZ) and the usage was very low.

This PC was only built 4 days ago the current ram is 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro, 2133MHz, CAS 11-11-11-30, 1.5V

The first two days that the PC was built I noticed the idle usage at 88% and if i ran a program it would hit 100% and pretty much freeze the PC so it's not an error in the display.

Mobo is MSI Z87-GD65 and I'm running W8.1 with no updates.

Probably not anything to do with it, but i'm running beta amd video drivers and it's showing my card as 5GB, I'm planning to uninstall beta drivers and run updates. Just wanted to know of others opinions.

The Process Explorer System Information dialog showing the memory tab, accessible from the View menu, would be more useful. Adding up the memory usage items in the process list rarely provides meaningful information. It was never intended that thy would add up to full system usage. There are very significant memory users that are not processes. You may have a driver issue or it could be something else.

LMiller7 said:

The Process Explorer System Information dialog showing the memory tab, accessible from the View menu, would be more useful. Adding up the memory usage items in the process list rarely provides meaningful information. It was never intended that thy would add up to full system usage. There are very significant memory users that are not processes. You may have a driver issue or it could be something else.

Click to expand...

As requested


This is again on idle, only background processes running, chrome, steam etc all closed

The problem is the Nonpaged kernel memory. The value of 3,497,304 is many times what a reasonable value would be. This would indicate a driver problem, possibly malware.

Hi Mal ware/ Spyware is bery good at multiplying it self, first 1 file then 10 then 100 then 1000 then 1000,000.. if the virus is loading with Windows then that data will load into the RAM... try MSCONFIG see what is starting with Windows... or a live boot disk like Hirens ( better if you edit and include latest virus programs like spybot ( not my fav program ) or stinger.. or Kapersky rescue disk... live boot disks stop viruses from reacting to virus control.. also make image first as if virus is in Windows and you remoe your Windows may just become affected. also back up data remove first track on HDD with manufacturers software... always instal good virus program... remember you only get what u pay for... I use Kapersky but you should configure it to get max benefits.. good luck Jay

A virus was my first thought, although this is a 4/5 day old machine and the only thing's i've downloaded have been a few programs listed on ninite and a couple of games. I did do virus scans and rootkits but I'll go over them again when I'm back at home.
I've installed updates and unistalled the beta drivers I had so I will see if that makes an impact.

I've also found a nice column in task manager to list whats using what in the NP Pool which I can check.
The thing that seems odd to me is that it isn't consistent, it can happen on startup or it can happen through random use.

Also i wonder if attempting to read RAM usage from task manager is best way, try live boot software memtest that i think you can run in Windows environment to test RAM, Windows is renown to provide us with poor tools, i always use non Microsoft tools for testing

Jaynik said:

Also i wonder if attempting to read RAM usage from task manager is best way, try live boot software memtest that i think you can run in Windows environment to test RAM, Windows is renown to provide us with poor tools, i always use non Microsoft tools for testing

Click to expand...

Well I was originally using RAMMAP and process explorer shown in the screenshots, but I found a view for task manager that will allow me to see what/how much nonpaged ram is being used and by what process.

Jaynik said:

Also i wonder if attempting to read RAM usage from task manager is best way, try live boot software memtest that i think you can run in Windows environment to test RAM, Windows is renown to provide us with poor tools, i always use non Microsoft tools for testing

Click to expand...

Actually Microsoft supplied tools are quite good, particularly since Vista. But the quality of the tools matters little if you don't understand how to use them. And for the large majority of Windows users that is the real problem. There are more advanced tools available and they are of great value to those skilled in their use. But to the average user it just means more ways to misunderstand and misuse them. That is always the way with advanced tools.

Don't forget that both Process Explorer and RAMMap are owned by Microsoft, maintained by a Microsoft employee, and available from a Microsoft website.

Back to the problem at hand. This is likely due to a driver problem. I mentioned malware only as a possibility, not a likelyhood.

Just got home and booted up after removing beta drivers an doing windows updates. RAM usage at idle is 18%
Will test again later after running games etc

After 5 hours of gaming and usual things all seems well.
If it's still fine tomorrow then I'll mark as solved.

All I did was uninstall beta video drivers and go with the latest stable version and i also installed windows updates.

Ok it's shot back up to 3.8GB non paged

After more searching, it seems to be an issue with my Killer e2200 network driver.