More than half my RAM is being used and computer slow. Why?

[BrokenBananaTantrum]

I have a gig of RAM on my PC and over half is in use all the time. The computer is slow. What is using my RAM and how can I get some of it back?

Thanks

Is PC running windows?
Can you start Task Manager (right click on the task bar and choose Task Manager)
Then choose the Processes tab and order them by Memory. You should see which process is using up most memory.

What Operating System are you using?

Windows Vista in particular is particularly bloated and I wouldn't be surprised to see it taking up that much memory even when you're not really doing anything.

If you're machine is slow and you've still got about half your memory left then something else could be going on.

Let us know what OS you use and then we can give some more information.

dim question (my computer is very slow at the moment as well) - how do you know what's important and what can be got rid of? Do i have to google every application, or is there some list of the most common things people have that they don't really need?

Not a dim question at all, I consider myself to be reasonably good with computers and I often find myself googling to work out exactly what some randomly named image name in task manager is.

So googling is a good start, it can also alert you as to if something is a problem.

However killing a task won't stop it starting up the next time the machine boots up.

Stopping that happening depends on what OS you have.

For example in Windows XP (and Vista and 7 may be somewhat similar) in the Start menu there's a Startup folder that holds things that will run when the machine starts and can be deleted from there if you don't want them to be. However there are a number of other ways that things can start themselves...

There's no straight answer to that shrinkingviolet. Sometimes people have anti-virus software that takes up too much memory and they could switch to a more slimmed down version. Sometimes you might have something running in the background taking up memory that you use very rarely eg skype. Sometimes it might just be worth rebooting because you have some processes running that haven't shut down properly. Have a look in task manager to see what's using all the memory. The system tray (usually bottom right in windows) often shows services that are running all the time, so have a look there too.

thanks, will have a proper look later

Hi I'm running Vista so possibly that could be the problem. You guys are really clever.

If half of your RAM is unused, then it won't be slowing your machine down. The main point at which excessive memory usage starts to slow your machine down, is when it runs out of RAM and has to start paging memory to hard disk.

The slowness may be something taking up all the CPU or keeping the hard disk busy. Is your disk light flashing all the time?

C&UP Yes and it keeps making a whiring noise as if the hard disk is busy but it doesn't appear to be doing anything

Is the whirring the fan or is the hard disk light also flashign away?

Press CTRL, ALT and DEL and then bring up the task manager. On the Processes Tab click the CPU column so that the high numbers are near the top, this will probably take two clicks.

What Images are listed as being near the top and what CPU value do they have?

I found that my wife's Vista laptop was always writing restore points. It seems to crete them every time I install a Windows Defender definition update, which seems to be twice a week, most weeks.

I reduced the frequency of restore point creation to weekly and disabled it on start up. It really seemed to speed things up.

www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/change-how-often-system-restore-creates-restore-points-in-wind ows-vista/

That first paragraph is not entirely clear.

I mean that Windows update probably creates enough restore points without the scheduled ones. I'm not clear why it schedules more than one a week, but maybe there's a Vista geek who can enlighten us.

Anyway, try reducing the restore point schedule to once a week and disable creating them on startup.

Does anyone know about 'empoering technology launcher'
apologies fior the typing as I cant see the section of the screen at the mopmemnt

Hello - yes the disk light is on when ot starts whirring. I'll look at the restore points and see what is going on there. Thanks for your help so far.

Do you have an Acer Laptop? That's a component that they install for you and it seems to have something to do with hot keys.

Has that got a high CPU score?

I do recommend downloading this:
www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

It will check your PC to see if there's anything "bad" on there that could be chewing up your computer.

In all honesty Vista is a really wonky piece of software and taking up half your RAM isn't much of a surprise.

However that shouldn't make it slow.

When you do that CTRL-ALT-DEL thing what is the CPU usage showing as?

My CPU is moving around between 4% and 17% what does that mean?

More nosy than hijacking honest!!!

Less than 20% CPU usage is no great concern. If it goes to 100% and stays there, that could indicate a problem.

Central Processing Unit, it's quite literally how busy the processor, or processors, in your computer is or are.

At 100% it's quite literally working itself flat out and it can't do any more.

The CPU will often spike up as things happen but if any one process is chewing up a high percentage of it (more than 50%) then something could be going on...

DP reckons that Vista is designed to use a certain percentage of RAM all the time. Rather than XPs trick of keeping programs when you open them so they open quicker next time, Vista automatically loads often used programs into the RAM so that they are quicker every time you open them.
My Vista system uses about 60% of by 2GB RAM all the time. If I need to do something particularly RAM heavy, it dumps some of the unwanted programs out of the RAM and lets me compile code or whatever it was I wanted to get on with.
DPs Vista machine has more RAM than mine (4GB I think) and it also uses a similar percentage.

Vista does try to guess at what you are likely to be loading and actually runs a low priority process in the background to load them off the disk and into memory ready for when you might need them.

However Vista still sucks when it comes to memory and even without that pre-loading still eats through it quicker than a mouse in a cheese factory, Windows 7 is meant to be a major improvement.

was up to 100% before. 97% was iplayer ,which wasnt on

I'm not too sure on iPlayer works but just because you're not running it that doesn't mean that the computer won't. It could be updating or doing some other strange process behind the scenes.

Older versions of iPlayer actually run a file sharing network so if you're running an out of date version it could be doing that.

From the Task Manager select iPlayer and then click "End Process". How do things look after that?

I did that and it dropped right down. Just confused that it was like that one day and not another