Windows 8.1 64-bit: High memory usage

Question

I have 8GB of memory on a 64 bit windows 8.1 machine, and windows is telling me I'm using 91% of my memory, yet its simultaneously telling me I'm only using 3GB.

I literally just restarted my machine a few minutes ago because it was being incredibly rediculously slow. I'm currently only running chrome (with a ton of tabs, but doesn't add up to anywhere near 7.5GB). What could be going on here?

Here's a bunch of my current info

I took a look at this: How to find source of memory leak in Windows 7? but I wasn's able to use xperf and the rest didn't lead me to a solution.

UPDATE - RamMap:

UPDATE 2: I checked Resource Monitor at Wouter's suggestion and found an "Image" called lxdecoms.exe with over 6GB of Commt (KB). I tried killing the process, but while it lowered my Commit Charge, it didn't affect "Used Physical Memory". So I restarted hoping to capture it again in full, but its not back yet and yet the problem persists.

I should note that I do have a Centos virtual box virtual machine running on my machine, not sure if that has any weird memory impacts that aren't reflected in the numbers in these tools.

I got xperf working, so here's my resource monitor and a wpa analysis of my xperf output (from xperf -on ReferenceSet -BufferSize 1024 -MaxFile 512 -FileMode Circular && timeout 5 && xperf -d MemUsage.etl):

What is N/A that's taking up 2.7GB of memory? My VM?

You need to figure out the reason you can't xperf, we can't help, without that information — Ramhound, Dec 05 '16 at 23:44
Possible duplicate of How to find source of memory leak in Windows 7? — Ramhound, Dec 05 '16 at 23:44
@Ramhound I'm getting the error "Cannot create a file when that file already exists." even tho I don't have any other performance tools open.. — B T, Dec 06 '16 at 00:37
driver locked is also very high. trouble shoot it this way: http://superuser.com/a/1125553/174557 — magicandre1981, Dec 06 '16 at 16:08
look at my pictiure in the dup link. you use the wrong graph, use Residentset graph and order the colums like I did. yes, running VMs show as DriverLocked — magicandre1981, Dec 07 '16 at 05:17
@magicandre1981 I have the Residentset graph right on top of that Analysis tab in the screenshot, don't I? — B T, Dec 07 '16 at 08:47
oups, I only saw the memory list part while typing the comment. Move the "Page Category" column to the first place and expand the page table entry. — magicandre1981, Dec 07 '16 at 16:47
@magicandre1981 Oh interesting. I didn't realize you could do that. This is really helpful and illuminating. Looks like crashplan is taking up at least 1.5GB, much of which isn't visible in windows' task manager. I'm sure there's other things in there, but that's really helpful. Make that an answer please — B T, Dec 08 '16 at 01:57

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

The high memory usage comes from a high Page table and Driver Locked usage.

To see which processes causes the page table usage, install the Windows Performance Toolkit, open a command prompt as admin and run this command:

xperf -on ReferenceSet -BufferSize 1024 -MaxFile 512 -FileMode Circular  && timeout 5 && xperf -d C:\HighMemoryUsage.etl

Open the HighMemoryUsage.etl with Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA.exe), drag and drop the graph "ResidentSet" from the left graph list to the analysis pane:

Now move the "Page Category" column to the left side and expand the "Page Table" entry:

Here you see the processes which have the high pagetable usage. On the right site (after the blue line), you see page table memory usage in MB for each process.

The Driver Locked usage can be caused by Virtual Machines like Hyper-V. If this is not the case, use the Windows Assessment Toolkit to see which driver is causing the Drivers Lock usage:

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 06 '16 at 10:08

0

In the screenshot you provided with the User tab of Task Manager, only the memory consumption of your current user is being shown. This means that in total 93% of your memory is in use, and 3GB of that is being used by your user. Other users, or system processes can also use memory.

In order to have a look at this, go to Resource Monitor (you can use windows find, or you can find a link on the Performance tab of Task manager). In Resource Monitor, go to the Memory tab. There you can see the memory consumption of all running processes.

answered Dec 06 '16 at 10:08

Wouter

1,641

There are no other users, so you're saying that the system is using the majority of my memory? I'd expect something to be very wrong to have happened to my system for that to be the case. Is something horribly wrong with my machine? – B T Dec 06 '16 at 21:11
I added a resource monitor screenshot – B T Dec 07 '16 at 00:24
Seems to me that CrashPlan, IDEA (IntelliJ JVM?) and Chrome are eating most of the memory. For Chrome this is normal, it likes using a lot of memory. Can't speak for CrashPlan and IDEA, as I'm not familiar with them. If you're not aware you are using CrashPlan, try uninstalling it. If you are, try googling on how to reduce its memory footprint, there seems to be lots of information out there... – Wouter Dec 07 '16 at 08:57
1

no, PageTable and Driver Locked is using the memory most. Both can't be seen in resmon ;) – magicandre1981 Dec 07 '16 at 16:49
Looks like I need to read up on what PageTable and Driver Locked are :) I always thought all memory usage was "grouped" per running process in resmon, and nothing could fall outside of that. – Wouter Dec 08 '16 at 08:30

Mundi · Answer 3 · 2016-12-06T01:55:46.757

-2

It looks like you are running multiple (More than 20) instances of chrome to me, even with tabs open, it should appear as a single instance. I would kill all those processes, and see if your situation improves.

edited Dec 06 '16 at 01:55

answered Dec 06 '16 at 01:46

Mundi

7

Tried it cause it was easy. It did indeed reduce my memory usage, but didn't solve or illuminate the problem. I was at that point using 1.5GB of memory and it told me that was 65% used up (while 1.5/8 is less than 19%). I wasn't the one that downvoted fyi – B T Dec 06 '16 at 02:01
2

I was, and it's because this answer, is a comment – Ramhound Dec 06 '16 at 04:34
1

On the contrary – even with a single tab, Chrome will launch multiple processes. That’s to keep the browser from crashing etc. – Daniel B Dec 06 '16 at 06:42
I also downvoted, because the information provided is wrong. Chrome is implemented to start a separate process for each tab opened. This way, one tab crashing doesn't crash the entire application. This is one of the great great things about Chrome... – Wouter Dec 06 '16 at 10:11
1

Also, the memory usage of Chrome does not add up to 7GB, so it's not relevant. – Wouter Dec 06 '16 at 10:12

Windows 8.1 64-bit: High memory usage

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