[hoopsman]

i have a pretty good computer, and it surprises me to see that when absolutely nothing is going on, windows sidebar says 32% of all my system RAM is being used, which i find hard to believe since i have 4 gigs of RAM.
anyone know how i can get it to not use so much?
tuna

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Hello,
You most likely have the computer set to use resources for best appearance, instead of best performance.
Plus all of those pesky little programs running in the back ground.
With Vista it is easy to use a little over one GB of RAM while the system is idle. You have 4GB of RAM? not even scratching the surface.

• Open control panel.
• Open system.
• Select Advanced system settings
• Select performance.
• Select for best performance.

Look at the bottom right of your screen, see all of those Icons? They are programs that are running.
Do you need an instant messaging software always running? How about the printer or image monitor program?
You can right click any program and select "exit" or "close" to close a program, but it will restart at boot.
Write down any programs that you do not need to run at all times (Kodak?) Google what you are unsure of. and (read Vista for XP) read this artical.

[hfcg]

Hello,
You most likely have the computer set to use resources for best appearance, instead of best performance.
Plus all of those pesky little programs running in the back ground.
With Vista it is easy to use a little over one GB of RAM while the system is idle. You have 4GB of RAM? not even scratching the surface.

• Open control panel.
• Open system.
• Select Advanced system settings
• Select performance.
• Select for best performance.

Look at the bottom right of your screen, see all of those Icons? They are programs that are running.
Do you need an instant messaging software always running? How about the printer or image monitor program?
You can right click any program and select "exit" or "close" to close a program, but it will restart at boot.
Write down any programs that you do not need to run at all times (Kodak?) Google what you are unsure of. and (read Vista for XP) read this artical.

[hoopsman]

well i took all the stuff i dont need out of my startup, and the RAM usage went down to 28% which is good, but changing things to "Best performance" made me want to puke, and on top of that it didnt change anything. the RAM usage meter still stayed the same.
i think its something else
got any other suggestions?

[hoopsman]

i have a piece of info that will probably help you help me. when i go to task manager to see what is taking up my memory, it says 52 k is taken up by dwm.exe or desktop window manager. i dont know what this is, but maybe it isnt mandatory. hope that helps

[Jacee]

dwm.exe is a Desktop Window Manager from Microsoft Corporation belonging to Microsoft® Windows® Operating System.
dwm.exe is the Desktop Window Manager and is responsible for the graphical effects in Microsoft Windows Vista operating system such as 3D effects, live windows previews and windows transparencies.

The Aero interface in Windows Vista can be quite taxing on system performance on certain computers and you can switch it off or reduce the screen resolution to increase performance

[hfcg]

Your 28% is just over one GB of RAM.
My machine uses the same amount of RAM that you are using.
This is normal for a Vista machine with plenty of memory.
You will not speed up your machine any by closing more programs to reduce the amount of memory used as you have almost three GB of unused RAM.
Right click the Internet explorer icon and select run as administrator.
Than go to pc pitstop. and run the full test.

Edited by hfcg, 15 October 2008 - 02:50 PM.

[hoopsman]

um there are like a billion different tests to run on that site, which one do you want me to run?

[hfcg]

The full test

[hoopsman]

ok i took the full test, now what

[hfcg]

You can follow the recommendations from Pcpitstop to improve the performance of your computer.
There is no issue here. 28% RAM usage with Vista, security software, sidebar, etc... is normal (for 4 GB of RAM)
You realy are not going to gain anything here, the computer would not be faster even if it was using 20% of your RAM.

[hoopsman]

oh ok. well thanks for the input, i was just curious you know? i did remove some programs from my startup and my pc seems to be going faster a little bit,
thx