Odd issue with RAM

[The Reborn Devil]

So, I'm having a rather strange problem with my RAM. It isn't a big problem though, as no crashes or errors occur. The only thing that happens is that an unknown process is slowly using up 8GB of RAM. Task Manager (in Administrative Mode) doesn't reveal what process uses all the RAM, but I'm certain it's explorer.exe (although the task manager says it uses 40MB), because when I kill the process the RAM usage plummets, and I can just restart explorer.exe again and all is normal. This problem has only occurred 3 times thus far, over a period of 2 months.

It happens when I use the Windows Explorer and open either a certain folder on my external harddrive, or if I click the Computer icon. The folder will appear blank while this green loading bar appears over the address field. It never reaches the other end though, and it's while it does this that it uses the 8GB of RAM. Closing the window doesn't help, I have to kill the process. Once I have killed the process and restarted it I can easily open the folder that caused the problem and view its contents.

It's not a big issue, as it doesn't fuck up with other processes, and only takes the RAM that it can take, but I still want to know why this happens. So, any thoughts?

Oh, and a derpy screenshot:

The blue line is the amount of RAM used. I killed explorer.exe when the blue line plummeted.

 

[The_wand_mirror]

Mh i wouldn't trust those things if i were you, the windows sidebar takes up way to much memory. I also once used to use those programs to see my videocard temprature and processor usage and such but they're actually taking away quite a lot of those things they measure ;p

Have you checked in task manager if the numbers of RAM used match? Because mine's only using ~28.000 kB on idle... if yours takes that amount of RAM on idle then...

 

[Gilles]

Google isn't giving me anything, sorry TRD. Seems like a pretty unusual problem, and one that could be any number of things. If it were me, I'd take it to a local computer store, just out of curiosity. The ones around my area all do free diagnostics.

 

[Crazed_seal2]

I'm not sure but I'm gonna take a wild guess, that it could be another program injecting its code into explorer. Though thats just a wild guess.

 

[Dr Super Good]

If you are using a modern opperating system like Windows 7 then the OS will borrow the memory to cache data. The key word really is borrow as it should automaticly free the memory when an actual process required it.

Lets give a practicle example, I am running at 1.20 GB of memory used at the moment I wrote this line.
I will now start and exit SC2 timing the load process.
SC2 took 13 seconds to load.
My memory usate has now shot up to 1.25 GB
I will now repeat the test.
SC2 took 5 seconds to load.

The memory that SC2 appears to have consumed even though it is closed are the OS files that the OS has cached to improve performace. If I was to actually go and play a session of SC2 the memory usage would shoot up even more as it would then likly cache more OS components.

What you also need to understand is that there are multiple tiers of cache. OS components get cached activly and appear to be an idle memory load on your system. In times of memory shortage the OS will be willing to give up a lot of its space so although it may look like Windows 7 runs with a idle load of 1 GB it will easilly go down to less than 500 MB if space becomes an issue. The memory used by the OS to cache itself is never listed as a process.

You then have passive caching which will use up all remaining free memory space to store files you load so they load faster the second time. Generally the passive cache will give up before the OS cache but in both cases they are a good way to boost system performance from large amounts of memory.

It could be that your explorer installation is bugged in some for so misuses the cache. You are also not using task manager so it is possible your memory usage is getting incorrectly reported.

 

[The Reborn Devil]

As you can see in my post, I'm also using Task Manager. On top of that I'm using the Resourcesurveillance thing (no idea what it's called in English versions of Windows, I just translated it directly from Norwegian). They all report the same numbers.

Also, it's weird that it would cache anything when it's just trying to display the items in a folder. As I explained, the folder appears blank, but a green loading bar appears in the address field. It never reaches the other end, it just slows down. It's during this loading that explorer.exe is consuming 8GB of RAM. If I kill the process and free up all the RAM, and then restart explorer.exe, I can view the contents of the folder immediately (and the RAM usage is normal during viewing).

And yes, I am using Windows 7 x64 Home Premium.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Maybe some option of your explorer has become curropt.
Make sure you have updated your OS just incase it was a bug that got fixed (although it should do this automaticly). If that does not work you might have to reinstall your OS as this is definatly not normal behaviour.

If you are using a system built by an out of the box manufacturer like Dell it might be a specific driver bug with one of the perephials of the system. Updating their model specific drivers could fix it.

Even if you are using a custom built PC, it still might be driver problems. Check each hardware device you use incase people are stumbling into the same problem when using it.

This could be very simlar to the problem I have with one of my motherboards where if you try and transfer large files through the LAN it will cause the computer to lose all network conectivity (it even reports the ethanet cable is unplugged).

 

[The Reborn Devil]

The PC is custom built, I have all the newest drivers (and latest updates from Windows Update), and none of the devices are reporting any errors. Also, if this had been a hardware problem I'd expect there to be more issues than what I'm currently experiencing. So far it hasn't really bothered me. In fact, I would've noticed it, if it weren't for the sidebar.

By the way, from my point of view it appears to be a software issue. Perhaps an infinite loop (or infinite recursion depending on how it works). I find that more plausible myself.

 

[Dr Super Good]

By the way, from my point of view it appears to be a software issue. Perhaps an infinite loop (or infinite recursion depending on how it works). I find that more plausible myself.

This can occur if some setting is curropt or a driver has a software bug (so the OS inherits a fault from the driver). Like I said, it could be the same kind of fault as my dissapearing network fault a computer has here.