Memory usage being eaten up

[Menalaus]

I'm having troubles with memory usage with my computer. It's a problem I've had in the past but only when Symantec tries to run its stealth scans (at 12PM each day). When I'm running a memory-intensive program at that time (such as a game that requires excessive memory, like Empire: Total War or Civilization V), the framerate slows down. That's when I alt+tab out and simply execute the stealth scan in the process tree.

I've been away from my PC for a year and that's how I generally remember combating this problem. I've been back for a week and I've had zero memory issues (I've been playing both of the aforementioned games with no slow downs whatsoever). This has changed today. I'm seeing massive framerate slow downs (I'm talking slideshow-like quality). Changing graphical settings does nothing (even if everything is set to very low). I have no background programs running (other than Steam, which is required to play these games) and Symantec. I'm looking in the WTM and taking a look at the process tree and it certainly doesn't look like my old problem.

Any suggestions or ideas? I mean, everything was working fine one day and the next it's slow.

 

[Revolution 11]

How much RAM do you have? Did you patch any applications recently? Do you experience slowdowns in other applications besides Civ 5 and Empire Total War?

My aunt had this problem recently where 3 of her RAM modules just died and she started complaining about how slow the computer felt. She told me she had 4 GB but I could only see 1 GB.

Next time this slowdown occurs, get Process Explorer from Microsoft and look at which processes are ballooning in memory usage. Compare these values to values when your computer feels "all right". Perhaps you need to reinstall any applications that have obvious memory leaks that Process Explorer can catch.

I would suggest using Memtest to test for RAM errors but I don't think that will help your case.

 

[robertdrumm]

what are your system specs? do you have a gpu?