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Is it normal that my computer uses 1.10G of memory?

No other program is open (Except Symantec Anti-Virus).

Dell 5i 4GB memory with Windows-7 64 bit.

Thank's in advance.

Hello71
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Gold
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  • Looks like the Rev 2 edit added "only". Based on the "no other program is open", I would guess the question is why so much memory is used when the computer has just been rebooted, as indicated by the green memory figure under the bar graph in the Performance tab of the Task Manager. – Ken Nov 01 '10 at 20:56
  • Removed "only"; the original question wasn't specific enough to say if it seemed like a lot or a little. – Hello71 Nov 01 '10 at 21:09
  • "Memory used" is a tricky thing to measure. My program can be using 10,000GB of memory, but only using 150kB of storage on the actual RAM chips. Other memory is shared among dozens of applications (i.e. a dll). If i'm the only one using a 500MB dll, then i get charged with 500MB of memory usage. If 50 programs are using the same dll...then am i using only 10MB? Then there's memory that's "free" but not "available". Only memory that has had zero's written all over it is "available" (and Windows isn't going to zero out all free memory on the computer). Memory in use is a tricky thing. – Ian Boyd Nov 06 '10 at 16:43

4 Answers4

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Well it is normal to see Windows 7 using memory from 500MB to 1.5GB. Although you are saying no programs are running... most probably there will be programs running in background which were shipped with your computer. Ex: java, jcd.exe

TusharG
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    Agreed. We would need more specifics about the machine but this isn't so high that I'm totally shocked. – Shinrai Nov 01 '10 at 18:42
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As you have oodles of memory, Windows might be allowing itself the luxury of expanding the memory disk cache.

This means the files and programs are kept in memory in case they are reused again. An often-used large executable may also be preloaded into memory for future performance.

The memory disk cache is erased when the memory is required, so it is not a performance handicap.

harrymc
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  • Just turning on my computer uses 52% of memory. Processes that are running do not add up even half of used memory. Cache memory on Performance tab of Task Manager shows 1736 MB. So, probably the missing memory is there, right? I was scared!! – kiewic Jun 08 '11 at 23:30
  • @Kiewic: Don't worry, the memory is there and will be available when needed. See also my answer here. – harrymc Jun 09 '11 at 05:28
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What do you mean by "use" 1.10 gb of RAM? What program are you using to measure this?

In general, modern operating systems use any RAM that isn't holding a program or program data to cache disk reads/writes in order to speed up operation. In that sense, using 1.10 gb is perfectly normal.

EDIT: I just noticed the "only" in the subject line. Do you mean that you have more than 1.1 gb installed, but only 1.1 is ever used no matter what? No, that would not be normal. Again, how are you measuring this and under what circumstances?

CarlF
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Windows is allocating RAM for fast providing of continous blocks to your applications. So it seems that your system uses much memory, but actual it isn't really used and isn't really free, but shown as taken in task manager.

dns13
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