Ram problems

[Diageo]

My computer has 2GB ram which I find fine for most things, and I have a little application that tellls me the percentage used, which is usually from 40 - 70%.

 

Sometimes when I open several programs it goes up to 96%. Which is understandable, but when I close these programs it stays up there. The computer stays slow and I'm forced to restart.

 

Is there something else I can do instead of restarting?

[Blue_Ninja0]

Looks like a memory leak to me. I wouldn't be surprised if it always happened in some specific program, but if it stays in use after the applications are closed then something is wrong with your OS. That makes matters much more difficult.

 

Go to your task manager and check where the memory is being hogged and go from there.

If all else fails, the simpler thing to do would be to reinstall windows.

[Nolan]

Open those programs one at a time and check whether or not they keep your memory in use after closing. If not, open them all up or in pairs or however until you find the combination that uses all the ram even after closing. After that, open up taskmanager and look under Processes(first Priority) and Services(likely not needed). Find the culprit and right-click End Process/Stop Service.

 

If you can't tell what a program is by the info Taskmanager gives you, Don't Close It! If you do, it'll generally be a BSOD, followed by restart and you should be okay, but it's better to just not risk that. Generally though, the descriptions are fairly useful in telling you what everything is as opposed to the processes name. Like Avast is names ashWebSv...

 

This won't truly fix the problem, it's more of just a workaround to avoid restarting. It's what I do for my memory leak with my Audio, it'll leak upto 1GB at which point my audio quits working, so I just end it and restart the corresponding services, much quicker than restarting like I use to.

[Diageo]

what's a memory leak?

[Ike]

what's a memory leak?

 

If a program doesn't shut down properly/is badly written it continues to use up your system's RAM, often it continues to increase the amount of RAM it uses and basically hogs your entire RAM to the point where there is no RAM available for other programs/OS and causes your PC to slow down/crash.