Author Topic: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?  (Read 1652 times)

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Offline T-Man

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Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
Is anyone else with Win 10 having occasional periods where a Process called 'System and compressed memory' is sucking up all of the memory (sometimes even constantly keeping it at 99% on Task Manager, even with the CPU and other two bars below 10%)? I've been getting this on my gaming rig (and know of someone else with a very similar PC having the same issue) for a while and I have no idea what's causing it. Sometimes when it happens it makes the PC almost unusable (gets so slow Windows stops working; had no PC all day essentially).

Have been looking around the net to try and find info and solutions but having little luck (nearest I've come is some support articles here and here that sound similar, though not sure if they are the same thing).

I was wondering if someone else here has encountered this?

Also goes by 'Murasaki-Tatsu' outside of Hard-Light

UEF fanboy. Rabid Imagination.

 
Re: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
I've not noticed that particular problem yet, but for some reason explorer.exe keeps having memory exceptions when I shut down. Otherwise, I haven't had too much trouble with the OS itself.

 

Offline jr2

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Re: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
Is anyone else with Win 10 having occasional periods where a Process called 'System and compressed memory' is sucking up all of the memory (sometimes even constantly keeping it at 99% on Task Manager, even with the CPU and other two bars below 10%)? I've been getting this on my gaming rig (and know of someone else with a very similar PC having the same issue) for a while and I have no idea what's causing it. Sometimes when it happens it makes the PC almost unusable (gets so slow Windows stops working; had no PC all day essentially).

Have been looking around the net to try and find info and solutions but having little luck (nearest I've come is some support articles here and here that sound similar, though not sure if they are the same thing).

I was wondering if someone else here has encountered this?



I posted about this when they came out with it, but I can't find the thread so here's from another forum:

http://www.tenforums.com/windows-10-news/17993-windows-10-memory-compression.html

Basically, it's supposed to be that way.  Windows is making more efficient use of your memory by compressing it, hence the memory is 'in use', but making more memory available to your system and programs.

 

Offline Mika

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Re: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
That sounds also like the SuperFetch thing in Windows 7.

For those who have actually worked with your computer since the XP times, you may have once wondered what happened to certain XP computers where the behavior could only be prescribed with a comment "Foiled! The Idle process strikes again!" In this case, your computer does nothing, while looking at the task manager will show 100 % load on Idle process - it should be able to do, but it won't. Funny thing is, the Task Manager is reporting everything correctly.

I found the root cause of this from a rather informative article just a couple of months ago. In the XP machine what happened is that users were using scratched CDs that caused read errors. Now that those read errors accumulated, Windows XP decided to revert back to more robust (and slower) method of reading the CD through IDE channel, disabling SATA. The interesting part starts now: it not only affected the CD drive, but also the HDD. On top of the cake, for some boneheaded reason, Microsoft decided against letting the user know about reduction of the driver speed, leading to tens of computers prematurely retired even from the company I worked in earlier. The way to check for this is through Control Panel and checking the HDD controller whether it's operating in IDE or in SATA.

Now, you'll also encounter a similar effect with Windows 7, but the root cause is different. Some months ago I noted a curious peak in the SVCHOST process in Windows 7, when the computer started to stall for minutes. Which is really annoying when you'd like to, like, do some actual work. I downloaded an utility tool from Microsoft that allows you to open up what SVCHOST is actually doing. Included there I noticed a peak in the SuperFetch process, which is Windows predicting what the user would like to do and loading programs to RAM to make them start faster.

Again for some boneheaded reason, no possibilities were given for the users to select the programs to be loaded to RAM, and included in the loads can also be your latest .WMV that you downloaded from Netflix, totalling 4 GB. So while they are saying that the RAM access is so fast it's no problem to load stuff there and clear it for other uses, this is only a half truth. By knowing a little bit of the internals on how the computer actually works, you'll know that in order to load things to RAM, you'll have to read them from the HDD. And the way hardware is built, it only does one thing at the time, and this is specially the case for the HDD. So you are waiting for SuperFetch to load stuff from HDD that is loaded to RAM. Good luck waiting the caching of large files to RAM, only to be removed once you start a program that overwrites that memory area.

So if you are anyway serious about using your computer (expect 100 % processor loads for all cores for days and memory reservations of several gigabytes), you'll do considerably better by killing SuperFetch from the Processes. And this actually also applies up to Windows 10.
Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline jr2

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Re: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
Sounds like SysInternals needs to write a SuperFetch Tuner tool..

 

Offline Mika

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Re: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
I think Superfetch is pretty much beyond help, as the company management has already sold the thing to the general public claiming it to be smart enough that it never bothers the user and as a good idea to start with. I could see quite an uphill struggle in Seattle with that and would not pity the guy who'd need to do that.

It's kind of hilarious that disabling Superfetch is indeed what you should do if you are doing any kind of scientific computing with Windows; in the hindsight pretty much all the critique towards Superfetch was, is, and will still be justified when looking from the computing perspective.

That is of course, if you ever get issues with SuperFetch. I never paid attention until it basically broke my computer, strangely after the earlier company forced a Windows Update.

What it comes to Windows 10, Microsoft once again broke the UI. Very annoying that the active window is not highlighted clearly nowadays, and this is a problem if you run software that provides information in several windows. Don't know who in Redmond thought this was a good idea.
Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline Dragon

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Re: Windows 10: Insane Memory Use Issue?
If you got the latest update, you should be able to change the setting (I think this is in personalization settings) that applies colors to the title bar. If you enable it, you'll get your active window indication back.

It's hilarious that MS is now having to add back features that were there since Windows 3.0. Coming up next, "save as" button for downloading stuff with Microsoft Edge (no kidding, it's really promised for the anniversary update!). :)