Some serious RAM usage

[Chrash]

Hi all, looking for some help with my computer.

Earlier today I ran into a problem (or RAM into, heh... :/ sorry) I was working in a program, and was about to save my progress. But I got an error message that said I was out of memory. "Bullshit" I proclaimed, and shut down Mozilla, but the problem didn't go away.

Now I use a Swedish version of windows, I don't know the English name, but when you push "Ctrl-alt delete" you get a menu of sorts, well, I poked around and found quite a lot of programs I never use, so I shut these down.

My computer is a Toshiba laptop running windows 7. It has 4 Gigabytes of RAM. But after I did this the usage was still 67%.

So I'm asking you Halflife2.net, how can I reduce my RAM usage?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Turn off all those programs which run when your computer starts up firstly.

Start > run (or windows key + R) and type msconfig

Go to the start-up tab and look down the list and turn off most things, you should be able to work out what most of them are. Since you're using a Toshiba laptop there may be a few toshiba utilities (wifi, bluetooth, touchpad etc) - you may want to avoid turning these things off.

 

[No Limit]

You also want to identify what process is using all your ram. When you press ctrl + alt+ del and open up your task manager under the processes tab you can see each process along with the memory it uses. If you click on memory it will sort your programs by it.

 

[VirusType2]

My computer is a Toshiba laptop running windows 7. It has 4 Gigabytes of RAM. But after I did this the usage was still 67%.

If you got an out of memory error, you certainly have a problem. The other guys can help you with that.

But I have to ask, where did it say your usage was 67%? Because if you are talking about in [TaskManager Processes tab], mine is 64%, and that's fine. Windows 7 handles RAM a bit different - it also has a cache, so if you open something up, it might park some other stuff on the Hard drive. So it fluctuates.

If you want to know approximately how much RAM you have available, it should be displayed in [TaskManager Performance tab] -

you should see:

Total
Cached
Available
Free

Available is the one that most accurately tells you how much RAM you have left.

 

[Chrash]

Oh, thanks Hectic Glenn, No Limit, I did what you guys said and it helped. Thanks again!

And well, Virus, initially I went by that gimmicky gadget that measures your processor and memory, yeah... First it was at 74% then after I shut some things down, it was at 67%. So, I thought it was something wrong with it, since it just a gadget maybe it cant be trusted, but my "Taskmanager" (I learned something today ) said I had used 2,5 Gigabytes (of a total 4), so the gadget wasn't that far off. Thanks for the info