What are some of the things that will use my memory unnecessarily ? It was less then 18% of 4 gigs before I opened a program when this computer was young, now its much more, 32% with windows only, right now I’m on line only its 40 %
what are you talking about:spin::spin::spin:
Have a look in your task manager to see what programs are running. Many load up when you start windows so you need to disable them. Do a google search before you do to check if they are essential services. Don’t disable unless you are sure it is safe to do so.
Like Richard Marklew said, it could be things that are running needlessly. Take a look in your Start Menu/All Programs/Startup folder. Anything that is in there will get started whenever windows starts.
The task manager is, ummm, okay for a snapshot sort of thing. If you really want to know what is going on in your windows system, download this set of tools from microsoft:
You may find autoruns quite usefull…
Read the instructions before getting carried away though, these are some pretty powerful utilities/tools.
@pixelmass, I agree, but unless you are rather skilled with computers, you are not even going to know what some of those things are. I debated trying to explain how to find the run key of the registry, but gave up, because I didn’t think it would be worth it…
This is true. However, it is my opinion that if you are getting serious about your system, it is probably wise to know a little bit more than where the ON button is and how to press it. 
Start up folder is empty. Nothing running. Auto runs sounds ok on the microsoft tools.
Thanks
I cleaned my registry and my history…a little much, had to log in here at Blenderartists .
What about desk top shortcuts to my programs? I have 34 .
Im down to 36% memory but that 2 times as much as it was 18 %.
It might be more easy If I was to copy all my files and and installers to my second hard drive ( If I have all program installers and disk) and reinstall windows new. Is that a bad idea?
I don’t see why my thread got moved here. Its a support question. It has to do with Blenders performance. I see lots of computer questions there.
About your shortcuts…
Create a folder called “shortcuts” or something on your main drive. Put all of your desktop shortcuts into it. Move that folder (as a shortcut, move to–> desktop —> create shortcut) to your task bar. You can catogorize them if you wish into seperate folders and use seperate task bar additions if you find that useful. This saves cpu cycle times and un-clutters your desktop as well. Kill your wallpaper(s) and just use a neautral gray background instead. . By the way, with my email running and firefox running and being online with my firewall and proxy running using two monitors, and blender as well I only use 1 to 5 % of system resorces. Not too bad I would think.
See this site for a more in depth explainations:
Sorry, I can’t crawl inside your machine for further help… That might be dangerous!
Thanks for the help . I think I see it now . I look at the numbers in task manager under processes and they are big.
After adding the numbers after turning off firefox these only add up to about 30 or 35 % of the 1.3 gigs of memory I was using at the time using
I got this off of another forum so I guess Ive been worrying about nothing
Sorry Thanks for all the help
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As I said, the amount that Windows uses depends on how much RAM you have.
1 GB or more when idle is perfectly normal for systems with 4 GB or more total RAM. It also depends on what programs or services you have running in the background.
Regardless, if you launch a program that requests RAM currently being used by Windows, Windows will free that RAM for the program to use.
So again, as I said, as long as you’re not actually experiencing any performance issues, then you have nothing to worry about.
- Proposed As Answer byPMFranklinWednesday, January 14, 2009 9:26 PM