Explorer.exe RAM Usage

[Jeremy]

No, I am not having 100% CPU Usage issues...

My curiosity is that over time, explorer.exe consumes almost 20 MBs of RAM and then as soon as I open Windows Explorer and minimize it to the Task bar, the RAM consumption goes down to about 1.2 MBs. Over time it will get to 15 MBs again and I will open WE and minimize it yet again and back down to 1.2...what gives? Can I stop it from going up so high?

[MCT]

im guessing the reason why its going high is cuz its being used as an active program + your browsing with it..

if u minimize it, its inactive & not doing anything, hense the lower cpu usage

[Zxian]

No, I don't think that that's the reason. I've tried this after a simple boot and I'm usually sitting at about 15 MB of RAM for explorer.exe. When I open Windows Explorer (Win+E), and then minimize it, the RAM usage drops to 600K or so and then starts to increase gradually.

As for the reason... I have no clue...

P.S. If you read his post, he said that he wasn't having any problems with CPU usage.

[Alanoll]

I believe it's be design...flawed design....but still...

The way explorer.exe usually works, is that it retains most DLLs that get loaded when an application is launched through it, loaded untill RAM is needed or the system restarts. This is so that the next time you use the program, it doesn't take as long.

Alot of programs you'll notice have a slight drop in RAM usage when mimized simply because it gets put in the idle part of the system and resources are diverted else where. For the most part, explorer.exe is almost ALWAYS active, unless you minimize it.

I could be wrong, but that's my guess. It's either that, or a memory leak somewhere, and it never gets too severe. Most people restart their system once every few days atleast. I remember back in the old Win 3.1 days when you'd have to restart your system once a day or it would bog down to unusable levels.