I suddenly have Insufficient RAM?

[Cy-Fy]

Hello guys well, until about the beginning of last week my laptop had been perfectly fine, just like it always is. Now (almost 2 weeks after) I can't open more than 3 chrome windows because it start lagging like mad, and if I have a window open for too long it freezes even though I can change tabs but I cannot interact with the webpages, The only solution is to close that window and open a new one again.

 

I have a "RAM usage" counter on my desktop which is now always saying 60% +. To be honest I hadn't noticed what it said before when my laptop was actually running fine but I would imagine that over 60% for just browsing with a few tabs open is still too much.

 

Well that's it guys I just would like to know if anyone has any advice. I imagine it's something to do with ram but if you think it might be something else, feel free to tell me.

 

Oh and by the way, the only thing I've changed in my laptop since when it was working fine is I installed World of Tanks on it but I rarely have it open, and when it is open I close everything else until I finish playing so I don't really think this might be it.

 

Thanks

[Technous285]

Scanned for virii (viruses) and other malware that might be hiding in the background already?

[TheKDub]

With my laptop just having google chrome and skype open at the same times puts me at 60% ram usage, chrome taking up around 20-30%. (I have 8GB)

[Cy-Fy]

Scanned for virii (viruses) and other malware that might be hiding in the background already?

well I'm running an AVG scan right now, although I wouldn't expect anything unusual poping up

[Cy-Fy]

With my laptop just having google chrome and skype open at the same times puts me at 60% ram usage, chrome taking up around 20-30%. (I have 8GB)

wow that's a lot man it's like taking about 2gigs of RAM to just run Chrome?? I have only 4 gb

[Technous285]

well I'm running an AVG scan right now, although I wouldn't expect anything unusual poping up

When that's done, give a scan with MalwareBytes or similar for things that AVG might not pick up.

 

Also, Chrome is an effing memory HOG. I'm running 32GB of memory in my rig and sitting at around 50% usage right now through all my web browsing over the past... 2 weeks I think is when I last closed everything and flushed the RAM with a full-shutdown.

[Cy-Fy]

When that's done, give a scan with MalwareBytes or similar for things that AVG might not pick up.

 

Also, Chrome is an effing memory HOG. I'm running 32GB of memory in my rig and sitting at around 50% usage right now through all my web browsing over the past... 2 weeks I think is when I last closed everything and flushed the RAM with a full-shutdown.

Oh okay hahaha, thanks!

[SlayerOfHellWyrm]

Your problem is only having 4GB of RAM, and running Chrome. Chrome is pretty horrible at using memory efficiently, so try another browser like FireFox, Safari, Opera, or IE. 4GB of RAM a few years ago was fine for the average user, but nowadays, I'd say 6 is a lot better. Just sitting idle, my system is using 2GB on average between all the system services running, and a few background services (Windows 8 tends to use more RAM for system services than W7). Just right now, it's sitting at 3.7GB, and all I have running is Chrome (in the background for Hangouts), Firefox with 6 tabs F.lux, and Steam.

[Jambls]

Your problem is only having 4GB of RAM, and running Chrome. Chrome is pretty horrible at using memory efficiently, so try another browser like FireFox, Safari, Opera, or IE. 4GB of RAM a few years ago was fine for the average user, but nowadays, I'd say 6 is a lot better. Just sitting idle, my system is using 2GB on average between all the system services running, and a few background services (Windows 8 tends to use more RAM for system services than W7). Just right now, it's sitting at 3.7GB, and all I have running is Chrome (in the background for Hangouts), Firefox with 6 tabs F.lux, and Steam.

With 3 tabs open in chrome and skype running, I am using 1.99gigs of my 8 gigs of ram

[SlayerOfHellWyrm]

With 3 tabs open in chrome and skype running, I am using 1.99gigs of my 8 gigs of ram

A good portion of that is Chrome too. Currently, I have Chrome in the background like normal, and 11 tabs in FF. By comparison, FF is running 1 process, and with all the tabs, is using 940MB of Ram. Chrome on the other hand, even just in the background has 13 processes running, and is using 465.4MB... and it doesn't even have an active window, it's just running for Hangouts...

It's so bad at managing memory, I don't understand why so many use it.

[Mooshi]

Chrome is a bloated whale of a browser than even the likes of old IE would blush at the amount of resources Chrome sucks up. Ditch it for Waterfox or get rid of extensions ect you don't need since each one creates its own Chrome process.

 

Using the same habits in browsing, Chrome easily can push me past using 6GB while Waterfox is half that.

 

Note: I said Waterfox since it doesn't mem leak bad like the likes of Firefox.

[SlayerOfHellWyrm]

I've never had memory leak issues with FF, that being said, if one does ever occur, I can clean it up via about:memory

[Cy-Fy]

Your problem is only having 4GB of RAM, and running Chrome. Chrome is pretty horrible at using memory efficiently, so try another browser like FireFox, Safari, Opera, or IE. 4GB of RAM a few years ago was fine for the average user, but nowadays, I'd say 6 is a lot better. Just sitting idle, my system is using 2GB on average between all the system services running, and a few background services (Windows 8 tends to use more RAM for system services than W7). Just right now, it's sitting at 3.7GB, and all I have running is Chrome (in the background for Hangouts), Firefox with 6 tabs F.lux, and Steam.

Yeah man, Thanks! I understand all of that but my only concern is that until 2 weeks ago it was running like a dream. It was perfectly smooth with several windows AND tabs open at the same time with multiple videos running off of Youtube etc. IT is just that I don't understand why this suddenly happened.

 

Chrome is a bloated whale of a browser than even the likes of old IE would blush at the amount of resources Chrome sucks up. Ditch it for Waterfox or get rid of extensions ect you don't need since each one creates its own Chrome process.

 

Using the same habits in browsing, Chrome easily can push me past using 6GB while Waterfox is half that.

 

Note: I said Waterfox since it doesn't mem leak bad like the likes of Firefox.

Thanks man, I'll try and see if using a different browser (not IE) helps. Thanks again!

 

i never had ram issue even while playing games at 1080p like skyrim @ 60 fps, ac iv black flag @ 30 fps and even though watch dogs runs at 1080p but has lag alot of noticeable probably due to bad optimization on my hd 6850 and low vram on it. My secret is i don't any background application, disable almost any service that is don't required for my work although i messed it up after a clean install and had to do a system restore but still i went on to change the service settings and still under run. And has only on startup program that is utorrent

mmm wel that's interesting. On the other hand I never game simply because my laptop is not capable of running anything apart from World of Tanks, very light photoshop and extremely light after effects/premier pro.

 

 

Also: guys I was trying to remember what changes I did to my system in the past 2 weeks to identify the problem and all I could remember was installing World of Tanks which should not be a problem if I'm not playing it.

 

However I also remembered that I went to the 'power plan' settings on my laptop (which is always on 'high performance' mode) and changed the 'processor power management settings' so that the 'minimum processor state' and 'maximum processor state' where at 100%. (Notice that the only thing I changed there was under 'minimum processor state' where it says 'on battery:' I changed from 0% to 100%. The rest where all at 100% by default). 

What I did yesterday was I reset default settings for this plan to see if the laptop would go back to working like it was doing 2 weeks ago.

 

Could this be some of the reason?