Does you windows memory usage go up after have your computer on for a while?

[Sureshot324]

Right after I boot my computer, if i check my total memory usage (commit charge) it's around 110mb. After using my computer for a while, it's pretty much always higher, even after closing all programs, especially if i've been playing games. Does your commit charge usually go back to what it was at boot if you close all programs?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Ram usage goes up as you use the machine, not down.

 

[XZeroII]

With C applications, you must release memory after you use it. What is happening is that some applications that you are using are not releasing that memory, so even after the application is closed, Windows still sees that memory as in use. Only thing to do is reboot.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: XZeroII
With C applications, you must release memory after you use it. What is happening is that some applications that you are using are not releasing that memory, so even after the application is closed, Windows still sees that memory as in use. Only thing to do is reboot.

Shouldn't the OS be releasing the memory? I mean, what happens when an application crashes?

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: XZeroII
With C applications, you must release memory after you use it. What is happening is that some applications that you are using are not releasing that memory, so even after the application is closed, Windows still sees that memory as in use. Only thing to do is reboot.

Shouldn't the OS be releasing the memory? I mean, what happens when an application crashes?

application memory will be released. Allocated memory by the application is under control of the application.

sometimes the OS can detect the orphan memory and recover it, other times it will not.

There are utilitiies out there that "claim" to be able to recover lost memory.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: XZeroII
With C applications, you must release memory after you use it. What is happening is that some applications that you are using are not releasing that memory, so even after the application is closed, Windows still sees that memory as in use. Only thing to do is reboot.

Shouldn't the OS be releasing the memory? I mean, what happens when an application crashes?

application memory will be released. Allocated memory by the application is under control of the application.

Correct, the OS frees all memory allocated by a process when the process exits (ignoring stuff like shared memory, which should be freed once every process sharing it exits).

sometimes the OS can detect the orphan memory and recover it, other times it will not.

"Orphan memory?" If you mean memory that the application has "leaked" (it allocated some space, then forgot where the space is), the OS can't reclaim the space until the application exits. Because of how pointers work, it's impossible to tell if something that looks lost is actually lost. It would also take a not-insignificant amount of time for the OS to scan an application's memory area to look for lost areas, if it were even possible.

There are utilitiies out there that "claim" to be able to recover lost memory.

All they do is allocate a whole bunch of space to force other things to be swapped out, then free up the space. The result is that you get more RAM free, but a lot of data that got swapped out has to be read back into RAM from disk (waste of time).

 

[Nothinman]

application memory will be released. Allocated memory by the application is under control of the application.

And the application is ultimately under the control of the OS, do you really think the OS doesn't do any book keeping on the memory every process allocates? When an app exits, dies, gets killed, etc the OS frees all the memory the application had allocated whether it was free'd by the application or not. A memory leak in an application is only affective while the app is running.

sometimes the OS can detect the orphan memory and recover it, other times it will not.

The only OSes that don't do proper memory management are all old and deprecated like DOS, Win9X, OS 9. Every semi-recent, decent OS does real memory management.

Most likely the OP's memory usage goes up over time because of normal circumstances like filesystem caching and the like.

 

[duragezic]

There are utilitiies out there that "claim" to be able to recover lost memory.

All they do is allocate a whole bunch of space to force other things to be swapped out, then free up the space. The result is that you get more RAM free, but a lot of data that got swapped out has to be read back into RAM from disk (waste of time).

:laugh: Now that utility must be a complete waste. Even if it didn't work like that, with windows XP it boots so damn fast that it'd be pointless to buy or download something when its faster to just reboot when you gotta which with 2000 or XP isn't that often.

 

[Sureshot324]

Most likely the OP's memory usage goes up over time because of normal circumstances like filesystem caching and the like.

Could you go into more detail on these "normal circumstances" that make my memory usage go up? And is there any way to clear the filesystem cache so my memory usage returns to what it was at boot?

 

[Steve]

Virtual Memory in Windows XP

 

[Nothinman]

Could you go into more detail on these "normal circumstances" that make my memory usage go up? And is there any way to clear the filesystem cache so my memory usage returns to what it was at boot?

Unused memory is wasted memory, the OS will flush any memory used by the filesystem cache if it's needed without any interaction by you.