Very High Physical Memory Usage History

[matoi]

Hello guys!

just wanted to ask for your opinions/tips regarding this one..

I have a Gateway MT3707 laptop with a Windows Vista (32bit) OS. lately, I have noticed a weird behavior with regards to my unit; its performance has really slowed down lately. upon startup, and/or even though only one one program is running, the whole unit tends to lag already. as I tried to observe its performance via the task manager, under the performance tab, I seem to notice that the physical memory usage history part is almost at its limit already.. it seems to be fixed at the 80-90% capacity always, whether programs are running or none at all.. (see attached image)

as an effect of this, programs running tend to lag, and also suffer the case of them Not Responding; in short, a very slow performance..

any suggestions on how to lessen/ improve the performance itself? already tried disk cleanup and defragment but after which, still the same.. thanks!

 

[Tedster]

your attachment tells nothing. It would have been better to see what processes were running. Have you ran your anti-virus and anti-trojan programs?
have you ran mike lin's startup editor?

 

[SNGX1275]

Vista uses Superfetch, so it will load common programs you use into RAM on startup, that is why you can boot, and get into task manager as fast as possible and watch your physical ram usage go up (free go down).

It is that way by design. Also having a bunch of stuff in physical ram is a far better solution than having it not loaded at all or loaded into a pagefile.

The lag shouldn't occur at all because priority is given to user input rather than background tasks, but in practice that may not work perfectly. Once the stuff is loaded (a minute or 2 after desktop) the percieved performance hit should be completely gone and you should be seeing increased performance over the same tasks in XP or 2000.

If you are experiencing continual lag, and not just a placebo effect from you thinking that isn't how things should work, then perhaps something else is wrong.

 

[bobcat]

Relevant Tuts & Advice

There are 2 relevant topics in the Guides and Tutorials section:

Slow computer and high cpu usage? A possible solution.
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic55152.html

Guide for making your Windows run faster
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic104136.html

 

[matoi]

@Tedster: sorry for the incomplete information sir. will note that next time. anyways, yes, i've already ran my anti-virus/anti-trojan programs. as for the latter, i've just downloaded it recently and will try it in a little while! thanks!

@SNGX1275: that's an added info on my part! will study more of what you said! thank you!

@bobcat: very useful links! thanks! wasn't much of a topic searcher before posting this one! my thanks as well! :grinthumb