Dear Ask-a-nerd: Computer "check up" programs?

[klr]

Hang on, i'm just looking at those figures again and it has a value for the load on your memory of 77.7%. If that's indicating that you are using nearly 80% of your ram, then that is the source of your problem there. Might need to check exactly what that is referring to.

I have two Excel spread sheets open, plus Google Earth, and Malwarebytes is running a scan. So, not surprised at that load.

It's still very heavy usage. Two Excel spreadsheets shouldn't account for much. Neither should Google Earth. Even with a lot of background services (anti-virus, etc.), that RAM usage seems very high.

A browser with a number of open tabs can be a real hog BTW, but even that shouldn't be more than a few hundred MB.

You should see how much I'm running at the moment, and I've only got 2 GB.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Whatcha got?

[pErvinalia]

Whatcha got?

Funnily enough it's called "process monitor". And just looking it up on google it seems that it is a microsoft tool. That was the microsoft one I was thinking off.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96645.aspx

I'm hoping this one shows ram usage. I'm pretty sure it does.

edit: and looking at the download link it references 'sysinternals'. That is one of the suites of tools i've used in the past (but lost off my dead drive) and it's got HEAPS of excellent tools in there. Worth downloading the whole suite.

[klr]

FWIW, here's what I'm currently running:

Firefox (numerous tabs)
Excel 2007 (3 x open spreadsheets)
Outlook 2007
Internet Explorer 8, running a Java client interface to our student records system - a real RAM hog
PL/SQL developer - a database programming & management application. 2 instances, one with 9 open tabs
Oracle Discoverer - a report development environment. 1 open report
1 x Explorer window
1 x command prompt
1 x 3rd party programmer's editor
1 x 3rd party file search program
Task manager

Total RAM usage: 1500 MB, "rising slowly". At least half of that is grabbed by AV and other backrground services.

Admittedly, this is 32-bit XP, but still ...

[klr]

Whatcha got?

Funnily enough it's called "process monitor". And just looking it up on google it seems that it is a microsoft tool. That was the microsoft one I was thinking off.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96645.aspx

I'm hoping this one shows ram usage. I'm pretty sure it does.

edit: and looking at the download link it references 'sysinternals'. That is one of the suites of tools i've used in the past (but lost off my dead drive) and it's got HEAPS of excellent tools in there. Worth downloading the whole suite.

Sysinternals. Don't start Windows without it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Okay, I ran it, what am I supposed to learn from this?

[pErvinalia]

is it showing memory usage for various processes/programs/etc? If so, sort it via memory usage and see what's using it all.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

is it showing memory usage for various processes/programs/etc? If so, sort it via memory usage and see what's using it all.

How do I get it to do that?

[pErvinalia]

dunno. If it doesn't you might need to hunt down a different process monitor. There's heaps of them out there. I've used at least two before which show memory usage.

eta: it might just be worth using the bog standard process monitor in windows and seeing what it says before downloading any more stuff.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm using Task Manager and weeding process, but I'm checking each one before killing it. I picked up 1.5 gig of memory already.

[pErvinalia]

careful not to kill anything useful! Try and find out what the process is that's hogging the memory (google it, there's sites out there that have info on them), and if it's associated with some malware or bloatware, then you'll need to work on getting rid of that.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

careful not to kill anything useful! Try and find out what the process is that's hogging the memory (google it, there's sites out there that have info on them), and if it's associated with some malware or bloatware, then you'll need to work on getting rid of that.

That's what I have been doing.

Is this normal?

[pErvinalia]

"Larry" is never normal....

[pErvinalia]

Christ there's a lot of Chrome processes there. That doesn't seem normal to me. There really should only be one (unless chrome works differently from other software). Click on the "memory" column once, or twice if necessary, to sort via memory usage with the biggest usage up the top and post a screenshot.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yes, massa.