High RAM usage at idle and not shown in task manager

[Harry777]

Hi,

 

I bought a used Dell insprion 700 Gaming off ebay recently. At idle, with only Chrome open, it takes 7.3GB od RAM as shown below. Can anyone try trouble shotting this?

[Fasauceome]

Most likely a ton of Dell bloatware, open up the startup tab of task manager and disable everything that you can

[JamesTheFolf]

Can you show a screen shot of the process page of task manager?

[Harry777]

Just now, jrhaberland said:

Can you show a screen shot of the process page of task manager?

[Dudis]

Had a similar issue with a bad wifi driver. Make sure everything is up to date. 

 

Killer used to be notorious for leaky drivers. 

[Harry777]

1 minute ago, Fasauceome said:

Most likely a ton of Dell bloatware, open up the startup tab of task manager and disable everything that you can

Only these are enabled

[JamesTheFolf]

2 minutes ago, Harry777 said:

Wow that's pretty strange

[Harry777]

Can anyone else help please?

[Fasauceome]

8 minutes ago, Harry777 said:

Only these are enabled

disable them all and restart the PC, see what the ram usage is

[Digideath]

Its not a leak. It looks like there are hidden processes that are using the ram. Thats why it wont show.
You could have a virus. I've seen this type of behavour before.

To test, run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. If its the virus it think it is, It should find tons of files that have been altered.

If i'm right and it is the kind of virus i think it is then you're going to have to reset windows to fix it.

[Harry777]

4 minutes ago, Digideath said:

Its not a leak. It looks like there are hidden processes that are using the ram. Thats why it wont show.
You could have a virus. I've seen this type of behavour before.

To test, run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. If its the virus it think it is, It should find tons of files that have been altered.

If i'm right and it is the kind of virus i think it is then you're going to have to reset windows to fix it.

Thanks, hopefully it's not a virus.

[Harry777]

5 minutes ago, Digideath said:

Its not a leak. It looks like there are hidden processes that are using the ram. Thats why it wont show.
You could have a virus. I've seen this type of behavour before.

To test, run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. If its the virus it think it is, It should find tons of files that have been altered.

If i'm right and it is the kind of virus i think it is then you're going to have to reset windows to fix it.

Hey, it says this down below

[Digideath]

1 minute ago, Harry777 said:

Hey, it says this down below

It found corrupt files. I had a bad feeling it would. So it def looks like you have the virus im on about. The good news is you only have to reset windows to get rid of it. You don't need to reinstall from scratch. Just reset windows using the advanced startup options. That should fix it.

[Harry777]

1 minute ago, Digideath said:

It found corrupt files. I had a bad feeling it would. So it def looks like you have the virus im on about. The good news is you only have to reset windows to get rid of it. You don't need to reinstall from scratch. Just reset windows using the advanced startup options. That should fix it.

What would that get rid of? Files? 

[Harry777]

2 minutes ago, Digideath said:

It found corrupt files. I had a bad feeling it would. So it def looks like you have the virus im on about. The good news is you only have to reset windows to get rid of it. You don't need to reinstall from scratch. Just reset windows using the advanced startup options. That should fix it.

Plus, after that the memory usage are only at 40 percent and I am not having sudden frames drops in games anymore

[Digideath]

1 minute ago, Harry777 said:

What would that get rid of? Files? 

I will reinstall the operating system. You will probably loose drivers and installed apps but you can reinstall. You should back up your personal files before doing it.

 

 

Just now, Harry777 said:

Plus, after that the memory usage are only at 40 percent and I am not having sudden frames drops in games anymore

I know thats fixed the memory issue but your system is still infected and has reminants. To purge it properly, reset windows.

[Harry777]

1 minute ago, Digideath said:

I will reinstall the operating system. You will probably loose drivers and installed apps but you can reinstall. You should back up your personal files before doing it.

 

 

I know thats fixed the memory issue but your system is still infected and has reminants. To purge it properly, reset windows.

Ok, Thanks. This to not buy anything from ebay again

[Digideath]

1 minute ago, Benji said:

I also assume that it is a virus given the fact that nothing in the startup menu causes any elevated usage, but could you get candid for a minute instead of only leaving us with blurry answers about some "virus" that you fear it is without calling it by name? Which one is it?

Because I don't actually know its name. Ive just come across it before myself. I had to fix a system that was infected this way before.

[papajo]

download and run this https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap

 

Check out whats going on on "processes" tab by clicking on "total" subtab to see which process uses more ram in total then you can also go to "file summary" and click on "active" sub tab to see which directories are using said space (run rammap as administrator)

[Digideath]

2 minutes ago, Benji said:

In which case you probably can't even say for certain that it is some malicious tool. Defective system files that happen randomly due to irregular shutdowns or whatever can also cause all sorts of issues. See for example badly-written drivers like one of the older Killer network drivers that caused almost 100% RAM usage.

But I would also agree that re-installing Windows is the best option as of now because if it were a virus, it will get rid off it.

I've every reason to believe it is mallicious. When i was dealing with said system that had this virus, just like the op, huge amounts of memory were being used but it wouldn't show in task manager what was using it. Also, the part the op missed, it consumes a single thread of cpu at times. But if you try to bring up task manager, it suddenly just stops. If you shutdown task manager, it starts using a cpu thread again. So it trys to hide from task manager. Also glasswire was telling me an unkown process was trying to broadcast on a specific port. That port is known for trojan activity. Also the scannow thing. The os files get altered. Scannow shows them as corrupt. Thats why you need to reset windows.