Hello, I don't know where else to get help, so I thought I would ask here. For the last week I've been having performance issues with my Windows 7 laptop. In a nutshell, it's extremely slow and fails to open most programs. If I open task manager, I see that I have a high amount of Cached Ram, and a near 0 amount of Free Ram. Now I know that this is not normal as I regularly check the task manager while playing CPU intensive games etc.... After hours of looking on google, I've gathered that having 0 free ram, and a high amount of cached ram is great. As it means windows is being efficient. Not in my case. As the cached ram is meant to be given to a program if needed, and my windows isn't doing this, it's hogging it. I've done anti virus/malware/adware etc checks using 4 different award winning services, all came back clean, apart from a few adware files which were deleted. This leads mean to think that I don't have a virus, and that windows 7 has problems. What do you think? Yes I can give my system specs, and antivirus programs used if needed. Thankyou.
Run malwarebytes then cc cleaner. USE SAFE MODE for best results. System Restore should be a last resort.
Other way around, zero free ram means all physical memory is being used and windows is relying on cache. Cache is disk based not real ram thus performance issues. Something is eating your ram.
May I ask why you posted here? Slow HDD reads and high Ram usage could be due to viruses, many programs, faulty programs, Or even anti-virus programs as well. Go into task manager (ctrl alt del) then task manager. In the processes tab you can see what programs may be using a high amount of Ram. Report back here. Another reason is that you're using less than 4gb's of Ram with win7. -good luck
I would advise you to post on a PC forum not in Kaw. I cannot mention or give you links here however.
Run a defrag Also open the run command using windows key and R then type %temp% and press enter, select EVERYTHING and press Shift Delete I did this to my sister laptop, she had 3gigs in the temp history, causing her computer to slow down. Also, the defrag with fix any defragmented files/folders. Download Microsoft Security Essentials from the Microsoft site only! Run a virus scan.... EDIT: Do the %temp% thing first as it is quicker. & Once done, PM me if its still slow, ill tell you more on what to do then.
A good place to post this is TomsHardware and Whirlpool forums. I have accounts on both of these forums and answer many questions there. Not many of us are windows 7 experts here.
My temp folder is empty and I carried out a defragment on my hard drive. When I open task manager, there is nothing eating my ram, all the figures are normal. It's just that windows has placed all unused ram (nearly 2gb of it) into cached memory. This leaves my system almost choking. As for my system specs, •i5 - 3210m processor •4gb ddr3 ram •500gb 5400rpm harddrive