Half my memory is being used

[freakit]

Maybe someone can help me out. When I fire up my pc I open up System Mechanics 4.0I. I look at the memory and it says I only have 329MB free. I have 512MB from 2 sticks of PC3200 256MB Mushkin memory. Is this normal or do I have too many programs running in the background?

I notice a halt when I run Grabit to update the groups. When it comes to process the updates my pc is basic unuseable. I have also seen my cpu shoot up to 100% being used.

I am running Win XP Pro. I have an Asus Deluxe board and an AMD 2500+ Barton CPU. Antec Tru Power 400 and something PSU.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

THANKS !!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jumpman23]

I've heard of peope losing like 10 MB or so, like 505 showing on a 512 stick. BUT DAMN, missing half???

[merlin_the_magician]

Well, i suppose you know what is running in the background, don´t you? Have a look at it and terminate processes that are of no use.
Other option, probably more likely, are you sure your memory modules are not in any way damaged?

[freakit]

I used System Mechanic to defrag my memory. Whats a good program to test it? I went int the properties of My Computer and it recognizes both sticks. I also checked it with CPUZ and it says 512 dual channel.

As far as whats running in the back, I'm not sure what all the .exe files are for.

Some of the programs using higher amounts of memory are:

lsass.exe 27,3420K

svchost.exe 17,452K

explorer uses 55,736K

iexplorer.exe 24,804K

McShield.exe 7,848K

Smc.exe 9,256

EM_EXEC.EXE 4,528K

mcvrste.exe 7,768K

alg.exe 4,068K

eEBSvc.exe 3,500K

Theres a total of 37 items in Windows task manager processes. They range from 20K to 55,000K. I think my sygate firewall and McAfee Virus Scan is eating up alot of my memory. I'll have to do some research and see what all these programs are.

If I find out I don't need these programs running in the background, how do I turn them off permanently? Or should I just do a Ctrl+Alt+Del ever time I start my pc and turn them off that way?

THANKS for the helps

[TierraDelFuego]

certainly mcafee is a resource hog but don't think that is the issue.

not a big fan of it as a virus scanner either so maybe uninstall it, then install AVG and do a virus scan.. things don't sound right to me. not saying it is a virus but...

[nimbles]

hmm.... those values of lsass, explorer and svchost seem large to me- just checked mine my equivalents on my laptop currently are

lsass 1,084K

svchost 3,436K (in total got 4 instances of it)

explorer 3,664K

[freakit]

damn. I defragged and scan disked it. same thing. Een ran regisrty cleaner, which I do once a week along with spy bot search and destroy.

I'll try and uninstalled Mcafee and see what happens.

[freakit]

Is there a program you guys recommend to test my memory? I just formatted and reinstalled XP Pro and I'm still getting the same thing. I'm starting to think I have a memory problem or a dim in my board. After I get a program to test the memory I'll do some swapping of the sticks in the slots.

I d/l-ed memtest86, but I couldn't figure out how to run it. I tried making a bootable floppy. That didn't work.

Any help is much appreciated.

[jackalman]

i dont think theres anything wrong with your computer, at the moment i am using 238MB of my 768MB installed memory, and your using 183MB. if you list all of the programs, i can tell you what you can safely end so that you free up some memory.

just one thing concerns me is that you say that your computer becomes unusable sometimes while using grabit, have you got a swap file !!! press ctrl alt del to bring up task manager, hit processes and in the bottom right does it say commit charge 183M / 512M if so that would suggest you arent using a swap file and that could be the reason that your computer becomes unusable at times

[richskie]

Sounds like fairly normal usage to me.
XP is a resource hog. I'm currently using ~270Mb out of 1Gb. You also need to remember that Windows will allocate large chunks of unused memory as disk cache.

[freakit]

i dont think theres anything wrong with your computer, at the moment i am using 238MB of my 768MB installed memory, and your using 183MB. if you list all of the programs, i can tell you what you can safely end so that you free up some memory.

just one thing concerns me is that you say that your computer becomes unusable sometimes while using grabit, have you got a swap file !!! press ctrl alt del to bring up task manager, hit processes and in the bottom right does it say commit charge 183M / 512M if so that would suggest you arent using a swap file and that could be the reason that your computer becomes unusable at times
Mine says commit charge 208M / 1250M

Thanks for the replies guys.