[Help] - System resources/memory decreasing daily

[amenx]

When I upgraded to SP2 a few weeks ago, my "physical avialable memory" in the task manager (not the total) read about 828mb right after start up. This seemed to go down bit by bit, day after day (with no new processes loading up). Now it reads 816mb right after start up. Where did these missing 12mb go? Again, no new software loading at start-up and no new processes in the task manager.

BTW, this never happened when I was on SP1. Any ideas?

Thanks.

(P.S. total physical RAM installed 512mb x 2)

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

Edited January 6, 2006 by Zxian

[LLXX]

Make a note of what processes are running in the task manager and how much memory they're using. After several days, compare and see which one(s) has/have grown. That is where your memory leak is.

[cluberti]

That is not really a good way to determine a memory leak, because some applications will allocate more memory as they run, and it may be normal usage patterns - if he has any applications running as services, or applications running in the background, this isn't entirely abnormal. Also, if he has enabled DEP (and it's enabled unless you disable it manually, so there's a good chance it's enabled), there'll be more memory swings as well. You really should use perfmon to track memory usage over a good period of time (days, weeks even) to determine if you actually have a leak, or if your memory fluctuations are just that - fluctuations.

Download the perfwiz utility here, to make sure you've configured perfmon properly:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

Run that, and leave it running for as long as your computer will stay up and running while you use it. Once you've gathered a good amount of data, stop the log and review it in perfmon, especially the memory and process counter objects - THOSE will tell you if you have a memory or handle leak, where the leak is occurring, and what process is causing it.

Good luck .

[amenx]

Thanks! Much appreciated.

[cluberti]

Not a problem - keep us posted as to what you find. I'm interested to know if you have a memory leak, or this is just normal behavior.