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Unless your using XP64 bit you will only see around 3 Gig of that 4
Win7 I think sees all 4 gig tho
Memory usage in XP
Can anyone explain to me how I can tell exactly what processes are using how much memory in Windows XP? It is a little trickier in Vista and Windows 7 because stuff gets pre-loaded into RAM but in XP the reported physical memory used should be what is actually being used by currently loaded stuff.
If I use SysInternals process explorer there are lots of different memory stats listed such as Working Set, Private Bytes, Virtual Size.
Right now my 4GB XP 64bit system says it is using 60.8% of physical memory. If I look at working set numbers, nothing adds up even close to that. If I add up all the Private Bytes sections listed I get 1,664,000K RAM used when I should have something like 2,552,404K used to get my 60%.
So where is that extra 1GB of RAM hiding? If I look at the virtual size, that is reporting almost 8GB so that isn't telling me the current actively used RAM either.
Is there another tool that can tell me where my RAM is hiding and what is using it?
Jeff.
Unless your using XP64 bit you will only see around 3 Gig of that 4
Win7 I think sees all 4 gig tho
Sorry, I thought I had mentioned it but I guess I didn't, it is XP 64bit.Originally Posted by LAURENU2
Jeff.
Yeah it is a little weird Jeff.. About as weird as my new Quad just locking up, like someone hit "pause" on it, I'm thinking it's some stupid drive issue as well loading up a game online, the others would be playing and I'd still be slowly loading...
Semi-retired from Free-DC...
I have some time to help.....
I need a new laptop,but who needs a laptop when you have a phone...
Now to remember my old computer specs..
Sory you did stat it was 64bit I missed it
OK next question
can your bios handle that size of memory Do you see 4 gigs in your Bios setup ?
Ha, that is funny, when I re-read my own post I missed it so thought I hadn't written it down. As long as we are all on the same page now.
Yes, the BIOS sees it, Windows sees it, and when I first boot up my system it shows a lot of RAM free, but over time it goes down. There might be a memory leak in some app that I'm running but wouldn't that show up in the process list with the app using up a lot of RAM?
Ok, I think I might have narrowed things down. The main process explorer window doesn't show this, but if you look at the "System Information" button it also shows how much RAM the Kernel is taking. If forgot about the XP kernel itself. It is reporting 715M paged physical and 257MB non-paged which almost adds up to a GB of RAM.
I guess the part that is confusing is if you just look at the task manager it only shows you "Working Set" memory which is what the app is actively using but I guess in reality windows has reserved the "Private Bytes" section for your app. Right now I have a process is only using 174MB working set (which shows in the process list) but it has 1.6GB RAM in private bytes so am I correct to assume that the physical memory usage takes into account the private bytes as well?
Or can you have a memory leak that won't show up anywhere?
Have you taken account of the system reserved memory set? XP doesn't explicitly state the actual amount but certain vital system processes reserve chunks of active memory for both hardware and software use which is therefor inaccessible to the pool. This does partly show up as the system cache and only as a percentage. In any variable load type of system, memory has to be available to be dynamically allocated to essential system use without any time lag so does not always show up. If you run Memtest or similar progs it does tell you that certain portions of memory essential to system use will not be tested unless you specifically set it to do so. The dynamics of cpu systems are so fast now that most memory usage is only ever shown as an estimate anyway and even reserved chunks can change so fast, they won't show up. A fully dynamic memory load sensor would have flickering numbers which would be unreadable. I dunno, somewhere in there should give you an answer. I understand the principle but it's not easy to explain for me.
Like an ol` 8086, slow but serviceable.
One advantage of old age...nobody can tell you how much cake you can eat
I think that is what is reported as "Kernel Memory" in process explorer. The kernel itself doesn't need 1GB of RAM, I think that is the memory needed by the kernel and the space reserved for other things like hardware.
Yeah. Kernel memory....it's actually just a small subset of the pool and the reported size is actually very small. The system also keeps a cache which is reported but never given as other than a percentage. My system just now shows only 109MB of non paged (out to disk) kernel but cached memory and available memory do not figure out as, under heavy load at the moment, the system is reporting only 19MB as totally free but cached memory is flickering back and forth to make up the rest of the 6Gb of physical memory. I did at one time have a little prog which reported the exact use of all the memory but it gave you a complete set of addresses and figures which was extremely long and changing rapidly. I'm sure it was one from Sysint as I often wondered in the Seti days of why I kept seeming to run out of memory. Actually, I did use several different progs and tallied up from their logs to get the total but over just the minimum log time, you could not keep up with the outputs. Play with some of the other old progs from Sysint and you may be able to pick up what I mean. I started all that stuff a long time ago when I found I had an aptitude for machine code and Fortran which allowed me to do things not available to a cash strapped young lad as commercial progs were rather expensive but I was always too lazy to enjoy programming, especially when there were loads of clever and enthusiastic programmers in my circle. I was always more interested in the hardware than the software
Like an ol` 8086, slow but serviceable.
One advantage of old age...nobody can tell you how much cake you can eat
Ok I found my mystery "disappearing" RAM. It turns out to only happen on Tuesday afternoons so when I looked at my scheduled tasks, that is when the IT dept has Norton AV set to run. My system has 8 million+ files so it takes hours to run and keeps gobbling up more RAM but doesn't really show it in the task manager. Once it finishes the scan, the RAM is released and I'm back to what I expect to have.
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