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General discussion

Windows Vista- A Pig

Aug 6, 2007 4:55AM PDT

Im really amazed by how much sys recources vista is taking on my machine. I have a core2duo and 2GB RAM.

When i boot the machine, let everything settle, on an idle computer, it says that it is using 42% of my ram! the only added services i have are avg free and gmail notifier. Is this common in vista, or is it something wrong with my comp? Are there any unneccessary services that i can turn off to free up some memory?

thanks,bj

Discussion is locked

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Wierd. XP does same.
Aug 6, 2007 5:58AM PDT

Maybe it's just Windows?

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i dont know
Aug 6, 2007 6:03AM PDT

right now im posting this and my memory usage is at 45%....thats almost one full GIG of ram just keeping the OS afloat. Ive seen pc's in bestbuy run vista fine with only 512MB so im confused at this whole situation!

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The idea is that...
Aug 6, 2007 6:14AM PDT

The more RAM you have the more it will use in most cases. If you only have 512MB it must rely more heavily on virtual memory (the paging file on your hard drive), but with 2GB it can reduce the space taken up on the hard drive. Thus, depending on how Windows interprets the situation it's entirely possible for it to use just 35% of 512MB but 40% of 2GB. In the end what matters is the 2GB will give you much greater performance due to the slow nature of accessing the paging file.

Hope this helps,
John

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Let me check my work machine (Windows 2000)
Aug 6, 2007 6:49AM PDT

Ahh, it's a little early to tell since I just booted but it's using 780K of it's 2GB just after a boot. It uses more as it runs.

Now remember this is a VM OS so free RAM is wasted RAM. In the best scenario there is no free RAM.

Bob

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You can disable some items...
Aug 6, 2007 6:17AM PDT
This post from the forum sticky gives a rundown of some of the changes you can make to reduce RAM consumption and increase performance. I'd start with services such as indexing, wireless zero configuration, and portable device identification.

Hope this helps,
John