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Lots of processes using lots of RAM while idling

AnteAnte Registered User regular
edited October 2009 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
I'm not sure if this is really a problem, but even when I'm not doing anything with my computer it tends to use around 1.5Gb of RAM, out of my 4Gb. Windows Task Manager is telling me that I have 65-70 processes running even with everything closed, which seems pretty excessive to me. In particular, something called svchost is listed 12 times, taking up around 500Mb by itself. Is this a problem, or fairly normal? I'm running Vista 64, if that helps.

Ante on

Posts

  • theclamtheclam Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    I think Vista and 7 aggressively try to cache as much as they can. As long as you don't hit 4gb, it shouldn't decrease performance. If you want to know what svchost is running (i.e. which Services), you can always grab Process Monitor from Microsoft.

    theclam on
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  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    yea, that's called prefetch. what windows Vista and 7 do is cache your frequently used programs into RAM, so this way when you want to launch them, they are already loaded into ram and will open much faster. If you launch another app that needs that ram space though, windows releases that ram instantly for the software that needs it.

    You're fine.

    wunderbar on
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  • nlawalkernlawalker Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    theclam wrote: »
    I think Vista and 7 aggressively try to cache as much as they can. As long as you don't hit 4gb, it shouldn't decrease performance. If you want to know what svchost is running (i.e. which Services), you can always grab Process Monitor from Microsoft.

    Starting with Vista, there's a nice new tab in the standard Task Manager called Services. If you right-click a svchost instance on the Processes tab, there's an option called Go To Services that will activate the Services tab and highlight all the services that that particular instance of svchost is running.

    However, if you are still looking for something more powerful, Process Explorer has pretty much outmoded Process Monitor. It takes more system resources to run but it is incredibly useful.

    nlawalker on
  • travathiantravathian Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    Does the computer feel sluggish?

    travathian on
  • AnteAnte Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    OK, thanks. I was a little worried, but if this is normal then whatever. Thanks again.

    Ante on
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