Windows 10: High RAM usage while idle

Hello,
Basically I noticed that my PC has a lot of RAM used but no program is using the RAM - see attached screenshots. Obviously it doesnt really affect me until I launch a game: eg GTA 5 which before ran happily at 60 and is now stuck on less than 1 FPS when I get into the game (even after spending like 20 minutes in lag hell to try to reduce all the settings to the lowest)
However Rainbow Six Siege runs at 120 FPS with no issues, so GTA may be an isolated incident.








(Also important to note I only have 8Gb of RAM, even though it says */16.0GB for the committed memory)





Specs are:
Computer type:

PC/DesktopOS:Windows 10CPU:Intel Core i5 3570kMotherboard:ASUSTek P8H61-M LE/USB3Memory:8Gb(2x Corsair 4Gb 1600mhz Vengeance) DDR3 CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9Graphics Card(s):NVIDIA GeForce GTX970Sound Card:Onboard 7.1 Audio (Realtek)Hard Drives:1Tb ST1000DM003-9YN162 ATA Device
1Tb Hitachi HDE721010SLA330 ATA DevicePSU:XFX PRO850WCase:Zalman Z11Cooling:Corsair H60 Water Cooler

Please help!

:)

 

High Memory Usage

Dear All,

I always have High Memory Usage on my laptop as it is idling.

Please advise on how do I troubleshoot the high memory usage in order to resolve it?

Please advise whether I should be getting more RAM instead?

 

high ram usage windows 10 while gaming

high ram usage windows 10 while gaming its file location is ntoskrnl

 

You might also want to post a screenshot of your start ups.

Cortana seems to be using a lot of memory for just being idle. If this is not being used, perhaps you might want to disable that. Your CPU also seems high for just being idle. I don't know if this 'jumped' while you took the screen image, but to me it appears that in these three images, your CPU load ranged between 15 - 36%, which seems high for your processor during basically idle time. You might want to boot into SafeMode and see what things look like. See HERE.

I would think you should see a noticeable drop in resource usage while in SafeMode. If that is the case, then it might be some software conflict.

You might have to disable one start up at a time, then test your system. If no change, go back and enable it, then disable the next one in line.

You might also be experiencing some memory leak some place, that might be the cause. However, you would have to identify which program or application. If you recently installed something just before the problem began, that might be a place to begin.

There is something that might help, at least until you get this sorted out. There's a free program called CleanMem.

I have used it for years, and I do have it on my Win-10 machine as well, although it does not indicate that it's compatible with win-10 (yet).

It will force the release of unused memory every 'X' amount of time. It's defaulted to every 15 minutes, but I have mine set for every five minutes. When memory was an issue for me, I set it for every three minutes, but that was with XP and only 3GB of RAM- so I needed it.

I have also brought up the task-manger and watched when cleanmem kicked in. You can see a steep drop in memory within a second.

 

Harna, HI! One screenshot you might want to look at is the detail view in Task Manager. Include the two columns I have indicated and see if you notice anything unusual. You can sort the columns descending to get the highest usage at top of display. Something may jump out at you. BTW, the mem column on Processes shows a quick snapshot of the last usage of memory, not current usage. See what you find. Hover the mouse over the column name to see an explanation of the column. Tomcat....

 

I find it frustrating that when users complain about high CPU or memory usage, and they show us a screenshot of the task manager, they fail to sort the CPU/memory column(s) from highest to lowest to give us a decent clue as to which process(es) is hogging the CPU/memory. Sometimes the answer isn't always revealed by that move. But the lack of an answer can also be revealing.

 

I believe I addressed that in my post just before your brief one on frustration. Harna just joined and only has two posts, he's learning. Perhaps you could fill in your system specs, just in case you ever ask a question or request help. It would make helping, well, less frustrating.​