I think Windows is using Virtual Memory as main RAM...

[bejamartins]

So, I've been updating a lot of machines over he last few days to Windows 10 1607 (Anniversary) and some of the machines take forever to upgrade the OS.

 

When they do, they are excruciatingly slow to do anything. They do not seem to be consuming much processor or RAM resources but disk access is abnormally high.

 

After going through the pain of accessing the virtual memory options and change them from 'managed by the system' to set the values I want and reboot, everything seems to be jolly again.

 

Hence my theory, a little crazy but can't think of another explanation. Not sure how to test it though or try to disproof it.

[Godlygamer23]

What is your physical memory usage like?

[matto97]

1 minute ago, bejamartins said:

So, I've been updating a lot of machines over he last few days to Windows 10 1607 (Anniversary) and some of the machines take forever to upgrade the OS.

 

When they do, they are excruciatingly slow to do anything. They do not seem to be consuming much processor or RAM resources but disk access is abnormally high.

 

After going through the pain of accessing the virtual memory options and change them from 'managed by the system' to set the values I want and reboot, everything seems to be jolly again.

 

Hence my theory, a little crazy but can't think of another explanation. Not sure how to test it though or try to disproof it.

I was having that problem with Cities Skylines. It was trying to dump all info in to the virtual memory and the game was stuttering and slower down but my system RAM was hardly being touched.
I disabled the virtual ram and then RAM usage shot up. the game was buttery smooth and i noticed some other things were better as well.

But then windows kept erroring and crashing cause it was like oh no theres no ram im going to crash, when there was plenty of physical memory lol

[bejamartins]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

What is your physical memory usage like?

It was very low, in the 10-15%, accordingly to task manager. Thing is I'm not sure what  task manager was reading anymore. May have been the virtual RAM access compared to the total physical RAM available.

 

3 minutes ago, matto97 said:

I was having that problem with Cities Skylines. It was trying to dump all info in to the virtual memory and the game was stuttering and slower down but my system RAM was hardly being touched.
I disabled the virtual ram and then RAM usage shot up. the game was buttery smooth and i noticed some other things were better as well.

But then windows kept erroring and crashing cause it was like oh no theres no ram im going to crash, when there was plenty of physical memory lol

What Windows 10 version where you using? Was the virtual RAM user-assigned or managed by the system?

[Dabombinable]

Windows 10. 16GB of RAM. All 3.2GB of the page file (256-512MB on the primary SSD, the rest system managed on the 2TB HDD) is being used heavily, while only 25% of the RAM is being used (due to shitloads of things being open at once).

[bejamartins]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Windows 10. 16GB of RAM. All 3.2GB of the page file (256-512MB on the primary SSD, the rest system managed on the 2TB HDD) is being used heavily, while only 25% of the RAM is being used (due to shitloads of things being open at once).

This helps my theory, seems like it is preferring the virtual memory over the physical one. I'm not using SSDs so the systems slowness is much greater.

 

Also, did you set the values of your virtual memory or is it being managed by the system? How was the upgrade to 1607?

[Dabombinable]

Just now, bejamartins said:

This helps my theory, seems like it is preferring the virtual memory over the physical one. I'm not using SSDs so the systems slowness is much greater.

 

Also, did you set the values of your virtual memory or is it being managed by the system? How was the upgrade to 1607?

The upgrade to 1607 went flawlessly yesterday, and yes I set the page file on the SSD, and just disabled the one on the HDD (as that was automatically created). Linux has the right idea with RAM, it only uses the swap file/page file if it runs out of actual RAM to use.

[bejamartins]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

The upgrade to 1607 went flawlessly yesterday, and yes I set the page file on the SSD, and just disabled the one on the HDD (as that was automatically created). Linux has the right idea with RAM, it only uses the swap file/page file if it runs out of actual RAM to use.

Curious. On my PCs where the upgrade went quick there seems to be no issue, on the other ones seem to be resolved after me editing the values. I do, however, have system and paging files on the same disk, that might enter te equation...

[Dabombinable]

4 minutes ago, bejamartins said:

Curious. On my PCs where the upgrade went quick there seems to be no issue, on the other ones seem to be resolved after me editing the values. I do, however, have system and paging files on the same disk, that might enter te equation...

I've found that some programs actually require a paging file, so I just said screw it and set a small one on the SSD as "screw going through HDD thrashing again". I still remember my first laptop. With 512MB of RAM (128MB shared with the iGPU), installing any form of Antivirus ate up the remaining RAM and thrashed the HDD hard.

[matto97]

6 hours ago, bejamartins said:

It was very low, in the 10-15%, accordingly to task manager. Thing is I'm not sure what  task manager was reading anymore. May have been the virtual RAM access compared to the total physical RAM available.

 

What Windows 10 version where you using? Was the virtual RAM user-assigned or managed by the system?

Win10 and originally controlled by the system but i changed to assigned