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Question
Saturday, January 19, 2019 12:35 PM
Okay so im running into a strange problem since october or november.
For some reason the virtual memory gets assigned more and more space for no apparent reason.
For example, this morning i've cleared up about 1GB of old data / maps.
In this case it was the PCDr folders from Dell i no longer use.
My C disk (which is the OS disk, a small 120GB or 108GB really disk), anyway, before i deleted those maps/folders?
I had 51.1GB of freespace left, after deleting folders, roughly 51.8! yay!! right?
Nope, now i got 50.7GB left.. so using WinDirStat, i can see it all went to the pagefile.sys.
And indeed, that has grown since this morning from roughly 12.1GB to about 13.8GB, for no reason at all.
Naturally i've ran common commands like CHKDSK, SFC /scannow also using thirdparty programs to verify the results like crystaldisk for the smartdata etc.
All report no problems, everything is 100% good and in order.
I have no clue how to fix this or whats even causing it, i know i can set the virtual memory manually, but truth be told, im not 100% sure what i'd be doing despite the fact i am an above average "windows 10" user.
To me as a relative layman, it feels like it all started due to a memory leak in X4 foundations (the game), which led my system for the first time ever im my entire lifetime of using computer (almost 30 years now) to a "resource-exhaustion-detector" event, meaning virtual memory apparantly got very low and yeh.
But to me it seems like it started with that, like somehow the space got lost and now the virtual memory controller? keeps trying to add more space when its not needed.. or something like that.
Its not doing it all the time ofcourse, or else i'd have zero room left, but something weird is going on for sure.
I really need some help with this, either this is a windows 10 (home edition) bug or im doing something wrong here lol.
FYI system specs : I7 5820k, 16GBddr, gtx 980, windows 10 home edition fully up to date.
2 harddrives, a small SSD 120GB, and a 2TB standard HDD for games/apps/po..stuff/etc.
All replies (8)
Saturday, January 19, 2019 6:44 PM
look in TaskManager:
Processes Tab: sort by Memory:
- which process has the highest usage, and how much is it
Performance Tab - Memory: - how high is Committed
- how is is the non-paged pood
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 3:06 PM
Well if im doing nothing except having browser open, then its the windows defender on top with a mere 120mb usage.
Right now i only have taskmanager open, battle.net launcher minimized and ofcourse the browser.
In use : 3.9gb (51.2mb compressed?) - Available : 11.9GB.
Commited : 11.8GB / 29.4GB - 10.2GB in cache.
Paged pool 749mb - nonpaged pool 505mb
106mb reserved for hardware.
I dont really see anything out of the ordinary, i've been keeping track of it all week long.
Best guess is that at times it doesnt unload out of the cache, so it never returns the space from virtual memory when its not needed, but im not 100% sure.
It sounds familiar to a windows 8.1 bug once upon a time.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 6:13 PM
when only Battle.Net is running, the commit seems rather thigh.
Task manager - Details tab: add thew column "Memory – Commit Size" and sort by this: what process has the highest value?
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:07 PM
If you really want the gory details google for "Mark Russinovich memory". He'll tell you more than you want to know about how Windows manages memory.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/WCL405
Rammap will provide extensive information on memory usage.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap
Given your SSD and large capacity drive, I would suggest that you set a fixed page file size of 6 or 8 gig on the SSD. (Mainly so that your OS doesn't keep eating up valuable SSD space.) On the HD, you can set it to systems managed and let it use whatever it wants.
https://www.howto-connect.com/windows-10-customize-paging-file-size-for-disk-drives/
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:11 PM
Check the computer manual for the maximum RAM.
The page file requirements are diminished when there is more RAM.
Consider maximizing the RAM.
If the computer has not had any recent BSOD and it is well tuned you can reduce the page file requirements by changing the type of dump file.
For example change startup and recovery system failure settings to small memory dump.
Complete memory dump can create a very large page file.
If you had been having BSOD then use automatic memory dump to have more options for troubleshooting.
If drive free space is an issue you may be able to leave the page file as is and find other files to remove or reduce in size.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019 9:27 AM
Well to me its like it doesnt unload out of the commited part.
If i reboot it seems to "reset" to a much lower value of like 3GB or somesuch, then it will slowly climb up again during the days and normal shutdown and bootups.
The only thing i've been using is browser/YouTube/netflix app on windows 10/World of Warcraft.
Mainly that last one seems to add to the "commited" part but never unloads it.
For example, now the commited part during WoW gameplay, will say something like 13.XGB / 29.4GB
If i quit the game, it will drop to maybe 12.5 or .7.
Thats the only thing that seems odd to me, because it stays like that even when i shutdown the computer and boot it up the next day or whatever.
Oh and FYI, i have 16GBddr..4? ram, 2133mhz, i think thats ddr4 but could be 3.
Anyway that should be sufficient, i never actually see the system actually use the whole system memory, worst i've seen is like 50% or something everything put together.
So i cant figure out what its keeping in the virtual memory cache the entire time and stacking it up apparently.
I'm going to wait for some more answers, maybe someone sees something i cant, or else i'll use the fixed page file sizes tip for the SSD and HDD respectively.
Edit : also would like to add, this system has Never had a BSOD in the 4 years of heavy use, remarkably stable.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019 9:48 AM
Okay to sort of add to my earlier reply.
I've rebooted, and yep i've confirmed my suspicions.
the commited part drops to like 3GB AND! the total commited dropped from 29.4 to 26.9.
Which i can now see the SDD went from 51.7ish to 54.3ish GB.
I have no idea why a reboot sort of resets things like that and not during normal use during the day or with a normal shutdown etc.
I cant figure this out lol.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019 1:04 PM
Run the rammap tool and post a snapshot. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap
Here is my laptop just after a reboot. Note that mapped file is using 2 gig.
I used the "empty" options and my unused memory jumped.
I doubt that you have a problem, other than the page file eating up SSD space.
You can also monitor page file usage with perfmon.
