Member Avatar for 5old13r

Hi, I'm just wondering what a typical resource load of windows 7 is on memory. Mine's running at around 550 Mb (ram) and it seems to be quite a lot! is this normal?

Thanks

  • 4 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 127 Views
  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by tigerbright

Dani AI

Generated

For : an idle total around the mid-hundreds of megabytes on a 32‑bit Windows 7 RC with 1GB installed is within the normal range for many setups. Windows 7 keeps RAM as a working set and cache to improve responsiveness; Task Manager’s “used” number includes cached/standby pages that are released immediately when applications need the memory. Absolute numbers are less important than whether the system is paging heavily or slowing under your normal workload.

Quick, practical diagnostic steps (safe to run on a live system):

  • Open Task Manager -> Performance -> click Resource Monitor (or run resmon.exe) and use the Memory tab to sort by Working Set / Commit to see which processes hold the most physical memory.
  • Do a clean boot (msconfig -> selective startup, disable non‑Microsoft startup items) to check whether third‑party software is the cause.
  • If a single process or driver shows unusually large nonpaged pool usage, check driver updates or remove the offending software.
  • Monitor “Hard Faults/sec” (Performance Monitor) while working: sustained high values indicate active paging to disk and real memory pressure.

Common service-related notes: many desktop systems can set nonessential services to Manual (not Disabled) — examples often safe to consider are Remote Registry, Tablet PC Input Service (if no tablet), Offline Files, Fax, Bluetooth-related services (if hardware absent), and Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service. Always check service dependencies, record original settings, and create a restore point before changing service startup types. Avoid changing core services (RPC, Plug and Play, DHCP Client, Windows Audio, Winlogon).

This follows the practical direction from (inspect running processes) and complements ’s note about caching behavior; as implied, different hardware and drivers produce different idle totals. If performance still feels poor after the checks above, updating drivers or adding RAM is the simplest fix.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for tiger025

Only 550MB? That seems insanely good. My Win 7 RC 64bit uses 1GB just idle.

Do you really tweak win 7 to get it that low or what

Member Avatar for kaninelupus

Only 550MB? That seems insanely good. My Win 7 RC 64bit uses 1GB just idle.

Do you really tweak win 7 to get it that low or what

God-damn, that's way too high. I'd be using this little utility to find out where the memory is being soaked up. In my case, Intel's Matrix Storage Manager was chewing up memory... not surprising as is STILL a damned x86 app!!

As to the original Q, seems quite normal, but can switch off services you don't need to spare memory. Keep in mind that the Win7 RC1 is the Ultimate build, where as you might be used to running a slimmer SKU of Vista. Also hard to positively define as no idea whether you are running x86 or x64 build

Member Avatar for 5old13r

Yes sorry I should have said:
(if this is what you mean?) 32 bit, 1.00Gb ram, 3.2 Ghz pentium 4, windows 7 build 7100.
yeah I tried ending services that looked harmless but I didn't know what was safe to end so I couldn't do much. Thanks for process explorer; its great but I'm still not sure which windows services I can safely kill.

Member Avatar for kaninelupus

Run the process explorer and use the Snipping Tool (just type snip in startmenu search box) to capture screen prints, so we can have a look over things, see if anything unusual going on

Member Avatar for tigerbright

hi - Windows memory menager will scale up and down ram memory usage according to avaliable mappable areas - so the more total installed ram memory installed , the more pages will tend to be loaded and retained there, rather than the 1/10 speed page file

Opening more tabs and browers windows will increase usage alot
but there is, in normal usage a certain amount of unlikely to be reused pages - so performance increases tends to drop off over a certain total installed ram memory - all system usage being equal.

win7 will see noticable improvement from 1GiB installed to 1.5GiB installed
however 512MiB will still run very smoothly , but any onboard video apeture will be un-optimal - as this uses ram memory area -
if using a slow cpu a fast hdd will help
If using a retro- pre sata ata33/66 plodder, consider installing a 10K scsi drive via a pci expansion card - i use one on my 1GHz backup system running win 7 RC , it has a hdd performance experience rating of 5.5, system performance is ponderous but satisfactory for casual net/basic home office related usage

My observations anyhow

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.