How to Troubleshoot Low RAM in Windows

What happens when you have low RAM? Or how about a memory leak?

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RAM is an acronym for random access memory, a type of computer memory that can be accessed randomly; that is, any byte of memory can be accessed without touching the preceding bytes.

In common usage, the term RAM is synonymous with main memory. This is where a computing system stores data that it is actively using. Storage systems, such as hard drives, network storage devices or cloud storage, are where a system saves data that it will need to access later.

RAM is much faster to read from and write to than other kinds of storage in a computer, such as a hard disk drive (HDD), solid-state drive (SSD) or optical drive. Data remains in RAM as long as the computer is running. When the computer is turned off, RAM loses its data. When the computer is turned on again, the OS and other files are once again loaded into RAM, usually from an HDD or SSD.

You can compare RAM to a person's short-term memory and a hard disk to long-term memory.

Depending on when your system was built, you likely have 2-8 GB of some variant of DDR SDRAM. Translated, this means Double Data Rate Synchronous RAM, meaning the RAM in your system uses a double data transfer rate by utilizing each up and down tick of the clock cycle (whereas basic RAM only uses one tick, limiting its efficiency).

Every application you open on your device will use a proportion of your available RAM. Some programs are notoriously RAM hungry, like Photoshop. Your system performance will be somewhat limited by the amount of RAM available, and the amount of RAM in use. For instance, if you have 4 GB RAM available to your system, but have Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Spotify, and Google Chrome with several tabs open, you’re likely to be pushing the extremities of your system.

In Windows, Task Manager provides information about applications currently running on your system, the processes and memory usage or other data about those processes, and statistics about memory and processor performance. To launch the Task Manager, right-click empty area of the Taskbar and click Task Manager from the context menu.

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Click the Processes tab. This will show you each process RAM usage on your system.

You’ll notice a number of applications you have open, like your Internet browser of choice, your antivirus, or your music player. Alongside those, there are also system critical processes such as svchost.exe, or perhaps your wireless/Ethernet drivers. Unless you know what you’re doing, or have been advised by someone else who does know what they’re doing, don’t mess around with any processes. Unexpectedly ending critical processes can cause your system harm!

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To see a dynamic overview of system performance, including a graph and numeric display of processor and memory usage, click the Performance tab.

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Resource Monitor displays real-time feeds of data about the critical systems of your PC. It's a free utility that comes bundled with Windows 7 and Vista, and it's very useful for monitoring your computer's health and troubleshooting performance problems. To open Resource Monitor:

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys to open Task Manager.

2. Click the Performance tab.

3. Click the Resource Monitor link or button in the bottom right of the screen.

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The Resource Manager will open in a new window, and initially shows an overview, with separate tabs for your CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network. Head to the Memory tab.

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The Memory section shows you the processes that are using physical memory (RAM). Sort by Working Set to see which programs are most memory-intensive. The higher the percentage of used physical memory is, the more likely you'll be to see high numbers of Hard Faults/sec. A hard fault occurs when Windows has to access the swap file--reserved hard disk space used when RAM runs out. Despite their name, hard faults are not errors. But if your system is experiencing hundreds of hard faults per second, either you need a RAM upgrade or a process is hogging resources.

When you open several programs, your system can get slow. This could be due to resource heavy applications hogging all of your available RAM. If this is a regular occurrence, we’d suggest purchasing and installing some more RAM.

If your system is slow, even do you have lots of RAM. This can mean different things on different systems, and it can also relate to the software you’re using.

For instance, some programs can have a memory leak issue. A memory leak is where an application incorrectly manages RAM memory allocations, causing the application to retain unneeded memory, or store objects in the memory that can no longer be reached by the application. In either case, the application can completely drain system memory to the point of crashing. In many cases the issue can be resolved by restarting the application, or by updating the application, if it is a repeat offender.

If you suspect a memory leak is hogging your system resources, you can try this simple monitoring technique using the Task Manager. It isn’t 100% accurate, but might give you some insight. Open the Task Manager, and browse to the Performance tab. Keeping the Task Manager open, one-by-one open your most commonly used applications i.e. open Chrome, and monitor it for an hour or two. If the blue line in the Physical Memory Usage History graph continually rises without you using the system, it could be symptomatic of a memory leak.

You can use the Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) program to install any updates that are available for installed programs.

You should keep Windows up to date by installing all important Windows updates.

If you filled your RAM, Windows will offload the least used data to the pagefile. Great in practice, but accessing the hard-drive stored pagefile is a much slower process than the ultra-fast RAM.

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Windows 10 works slightly differently. It still uses the pagefile, but now when your RAM starts to fill up, it can compress old pages of memory to free up space. Meaning, when you leave an application running, but not in use, Windows 10 will make the memory imprint smaller, rather than copying it to the hard-drive.

Decompressing the memory takes up more CPU clock cycles, placing a little bit more strain on performance, though the performance cost is usually vastly reduced versus recalling application-specific data from the hard-drive. Each time Windows 10 compresses a memory page, the system process expands just a little bit.

Windows features an inbuilt Memory Diagnostic Tool. This will run automatically, if Windows detects a memory issue, but you can also run it independently, if you suspect there is an issue.

Open the Start menu and type memory, then select the Windows Memory Diagnostic.

You can choose to immediately restart your system and diagnose, or for the diagnostic to run following the next restart. Be sure to save your work before selecting the immediate restart!

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Hopefully this tutorial will help you've identified your RAM issue, or at least have a better understanding of what you might be facing.