How do I check memory usage of all processes

Anusha · Mar 1, 2015

Hi there,

I'm currently troubleshooting performance issues with my work PC. Even when I am not doing much, the memory usage is quite high.

I have 4GB RAM in the system (128MB allocated for the GPU, I believe, as System Properties window shows 3.88GB memory usable) and am running Windows 8.1 Pro with all the updates installed. I have McAfee VirusScan Enterprise as the security software.

In TaskManager, I checked the memory usage of each process from the Process tab, but when I added them altogether to get the total usage, that value was way off the percentage shown in the Performance tab of it. It seems a huge part of it is missing. (Sadly, I cannot upload the screenshots due to rules.)

For example, when I add all the memory usage figures right now, I would get around 500MB, where as the memory usage shown in the Performance Tab of Task Manager indicates that I am using 36% memory, which is around 1400MB.

The other figures shown on the same page are as follows.

Available: 2.4GB
Cached: 1.8GB
Committed: 2.0GB/7.9GB
Hardware reserved: 125MB
Page pool: 355MB
Non page pool: 85.1MB

I also checked ProcessExplorer. It also did not turn out to be useful in this quest. The memory gap can be seen with it as well.

Can anyone of you tell me how to check the memory usage of every process that is running in the system?

popeye · Mar 1, 2015

Post this page. Your usage seems about right to me. People get too hung up on usage, that is why the memory is there. If you are getting warnings then that is a different thing.

Anusha · Mar 1, 2015

popeye said:
Post this page. Your usage seems about right to me. People get too hung up on usage, that is why the memory is there. If you are getting warnings then that is a different thing.

View attachment 58672

Thanks for the post.

The information I gave in the first post was extracted from that page.
Sorry, I cannot upload a file because that might set off alarms.

I guess not everything is shown to the end user, especially the core processes and drivers. They must be using the "missing" portion.

LMiller7 · Mar 1, 2015

36% usage and 2.4 GB available from a total of 4 GB RAM does not seem unusual or cause for concern. Adding up the process memory usage will never equal the total usage. It was never intended that it would. There are some very significant users of memory that are not processes, not all of which are shown in Task Manager. Memory usage cannot be accounted for by such simple means.

Memory usage in any modern operating system is highly dynamic. Usage at present may seem high but that is only because there is no better use for the memory. If a large application is started then this usage will be automatically trimmed back to meet the demand. I have seen this happen many times.

I see no cause for concern.