W11 - using too much memory?

[David]

I am tending to a W11 PC of a friend, with my W11 PC alongside.

The initial problem was their PC was very sluggish.
I checked using Task Manager and memory was about 98% full.
I rebooted and with nothing running (foreground programmes) it was around
60% - 65%.
As soon as things started running memory usage was up to 80% or more.
I've beaten it over the head and got it down to 50% with nothing running
(mainly by telling Edge not to keep hogging stuff especially when not
running) but there doesn't seem to be a lot of headroom.

This PC is currently running at 46% memory,
However it has 16 GB memory, which means 7.36 GB is in use.
I'm just running Task Manager and PAN.

All of this is leading up to the question - should the minimum RAM for W11
be more than 8GB?

I'm still puzzled by this, because Windows should free off memory when it
runs short.
This makes me think of a memory leak.

So - given that my PC with 16 GB is using nearly 8GB not doing much should
the default be 16GB?

Did I mention I hate W11?

Cheers



Dave R

[Abandoned Trolley]

Post by David
I am tending to a W11 PC of a friend, with my W11 PC alongside.
The initial problem was their PC was very sluggish.
I checked using Task Manager and memory was about 98% full.
I rebooted and with nothing running (foreground programmes) it was around
60% - 65%.
As soon as things started running memory usage was up to 80% or more.
I've beaten it over the head and got it down to 50% with nothing running
(mainly by telling Edge not to keep hogging stuff especially when not
running) but there doesn't seem to be a lot of headroom.
This PC is currently running at 46% memory,
However it has 16 GB memory, which means 7.36 GB is in use.
I'm just running Task Manager and PAN.
All of this is leading up to the question - should the minimum RAM for W11
be more than 8GB?
I'm still puzzled by this, because Windows should free off memory when it
runs short.
This makes me think of a memory leak.
So - given that my PC with 16 GB is using nearly 8GB not doing much should
the default be 16GB?
Did I mention I hate W11?
Cheers
Dave R

Would this be Win 11 Pro by any chance ?

On this system Thunderbird seems to use an irreducible minimum of around
600MB

Firefox appears just as awful as Edge - requiring nearly 600MB just to
open the BBC home page

Its a bit of a struggle to get the total memory use below 6GB, so I
would suggest that any systems limited to 8GB are not going to perform
very well - theres not much point having a system thats "not doing much"

Subjectively, (using identical hardware) I would say that things appear
slightly worse after the upgrade from W10 but I have no data to prove it
one way or the other.

The fundamental problem is .. coders dont give a fuck about memory use
any more - partly on account of virtual memory systems, and nobody seems
to be interested in native code.

What happened to optimising compilers ?

[Chris]

Post by David
I am tending to a W11 PC of a friend, with my W11 PC alongside.
The initial problem was their PC was very sluggish.
I checked using Task Manager and memory was about 98% full.
I rebooted and with nothing running (foreground programmes) it was around
60% - 65%.
As soon as things started running memory usage was up to 80% or more.
I've beaten it over the head and got it down to 50% with nothing running
(mainly by telling Edge not to keep hogging stuff especially when not
running) but there doesn't seem to be a lot of headroom.

Why do you care? The PC is being efficient by using as much RAM as
possible. Let the computer decide how to use RAM as it knows better than
you.

Post by David
This PC is currently running at 46% memory,
However it has 16 GB memory, which means 7.36 GB is in use.
I'm just running Task Manager and PAN.
All of this is leading up to the question - should the minimum RAM for W11
be more than 8GB?
I'm still puzzled by this, because Windows should free off memory when it
runs short.

It does, but not by wasting RAM capacity. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

All OSes work like this, not just W11.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Chris
Why do you care? The PC is being efficient by using as much RAM as
possible. Let the computer decide how to use RAM as it knows better than
you.

About right, this W11Home machine has 16GB, after a fresh boot it uses
about 4.5GB, loading a single tab in firefox takes it to 5.6GB.

Don't worry about what %age of RAM task manager shows being used, worry
about how many hard page faults per second resource monitor is showing,
if that's non zero most of the time, you might benefit from more RAM ...

[David]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Chris
Why do you care? The PC is being efficient by using as much RAM as
possible. Let the computer decide how to use RAM as it knows better
than you.

About right, this W11Home machine has 16GB, after a fresh boot it uses
about 4.5GB, loading a single tab in firefox takes it to 5.6GB.
Don't worry about what %age of RAM task manager shows being used, worry
about how many hard page faults per second resource monitor is showing,
if that's non zero most of the time, you might benefit from more RAM ...

Or if the system grinds to a halt?

This is the issue I am trying to track - how the system got into a
position of having virtually no free memory.
I would usually suspect a dodgy program with a memory leak.

I have established why this could manifest over a very long period - the
system was never restarted but just put into sleep mode when finished with.

A reboot and all was reasonably well.
However systems can have uptime measured in years so this creeping
paralysis is not normal.

"worry about how many hard page faults per second resource monitor is
showing"

Thanks for the reminder - it is a long time since I have had to look at
all seriously at operating system performance.

Too late now as the system is rebooted.
Memo for next time.

I've checked this system running W10 and it has 10GB of 16 GB in use and
no hard page faults.

I did note that Edge seemed to be using a lot of memory even when it was
not running in the foreground.

Cheers



Dave R

[Chris]

Post by David

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Chris
Why do you care? The PC is being efficient by using as much RAM as
possible. Let the computer decide how to use RAM as it knows better
than you.

About right, this W11Home machine has 16GB, after a fresh boot it uses
about 4.5GB, loading a single tab in firefox takes it to 5.6GB.
Don't worry about what %age of RAM task manager shows being used, worry
about how many hard page faults per second resource monitor is showing,
if that's non zero most of the time, you might benefit from more RAM ...

Or if the system grinds to a halt?

Are the PCs you're taking about grinding to halt because there's no free
RAM?

Post by David
This is the issue I am trying to track - how the system got into a
position of having virtually no free memory.
I would usually suspect a dodgy program with a memory leak.

You'd suspect wrong.

Post by David
I have established why this could manifest over a very long period - the
system was never restarted but just put into sleep mode when finished with.
A reboot and all was reasonably well.
However systems can have uptime measured in years so this creeping
paralysis is not normal.

Genuinely can't imagine a desktop windows machine with an uptime in years.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Post by David
However systems can have uptime measured in years so this creeping
paralysis is not normal.

I'd hope not, since that would mean unpatched for the weekly security
holes...

Cheers - Jaimie

[Abandoned Trolley]

Post by David
I am tending to a W11 PC of a friend, with my W11 PC alongside.
The initial problem was their PC was very sluggish.
I checked using Task Manager and memory was about 98% full.
I rebooted and with nothing running (foreground programmes) it was around
60% - 65%.
As soon as things started running memory usage was up to 80% or more.
I've beaten it over the head and got it down to 50% with nothing running
(mainly by telling Edge not to keep hogging stuff especially when not
running) but there doesn't seem to be a lot of headroom.
This PC is currently running at 46% memory,
However it has 16 GB memory, which means 7.36 GB is in use.
I'm just running Task Manager and PAN.
All of this is leading up to the question - should the minimum RAM for W11
be more than 8GB?
I'm still puzzled by this, because Windows should free off memory when it
runs short.
This makes me think of a memory leak.
So - given that my PC with 16 GB is using nearly 8GB not doing much should
the default be 16GB?
Did I mention I hate W11?
Cheers
Dave R

Well ... here's a thought / observation (although it might not be
completely relevant)

I often use virtual machines within VirtualBox for various tasks, and
they are almost invariably some flavour of Linux / Ubuntu.

They are mostly allocated 12 - 16 GB of memory, but when they are
started up, the memory use of the host machine (Win 11 Pro) is only
increased by the amount actually used by the guest OS, usually around
only 3-4 GB

If I then start an application inside the VM then the memory use of the
host will be increased accordingly - Firefox seems to use around 600-700 MB

I recently decided to create a Win 10 VM, and allocated 24GB of memory
for it (the host machine has 64GB) and .. when the machine is started,
the memory use of the guest slowly increases by 24GB

Starting applications within the Win 10 VM makes no difference whatever
to the memory use of the host

It seems that Win 10 must be writing something to the whole of the
allocated RAM, but I have no idea what’s going on

Meanwhile, the Task Manager inside the Win 10 guest machine says that
its only using 2.4GB :-\