Something is sucking RAM and I can't figure out what...

[mvollmers]

Hi, all.  need some help; not really sure where to start so I'm going with the software side first.  I have a desktop that is just dragging whenever I try to do something (takes 3-4 minutes to load firefox, coming out of sleep is a 10 minute ordeal, etc.).  Here's the specs to start with:
- Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit
- 2 GB ram
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 5000+ 2.60GHz


Right now, as I type this, I have the windows task manager open.  It is cycling around 10% cpu but is at 1.04GB RAM (59% of total).  broken down, it says 1790 total, 963 cached, 59 free.  Kernal memory is 295 total, 232 paged, 62 non-paged.  If I hop over to processes, I see that there are 11 svchost.exe (I assume this is windows) for a total of 220 MB or so.  Firefox is using ~100MB, mcshield is taking in ~45 MB and rounding out the top five are dwm.exe (23 MB) and explorer.exe (16 MB).  This totals to 400 MB.   the remaining 75 processes shown are all under 10 MB each, and most are below 1MB.  by my count, I'm only showing half a gig being accounted for.  I suspect this is where I'm getting killed on performance.  I can add more RAM (that is my plan at least) but short-term it seems like I should have a better response than I am currently getting.  Any suggestions on what could be the drag and how to find/fix it?  Thanks!!

[Allan]

As a general rule, the more ram that is being utilized, the more efficiently the system is running. That's not your problem.

If the system is "running slowly" it can be any number of things including malware. Have you run full system scans with BOTH your anti virus app and with MalwareBytes? If not, please let's do that now.

[mvollmers]

I have ran both the McAffe scan and a Malewarebyte scan.  both showed up with no issues found.

[Allan]

1) What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

2) Let's try a selective startup and see what happens: Open msconfig and on the General tab choose "selective startup" (uncheck all three items) and reboot. Does the problem still occur? If not, start adding items back to msconfig one or two at a time, rebooting after each change, until the problem reappears and you'll have identified the offending process. This is clearly a time consuming procedure, but it is the best way to determine if some process loading with the system is the cause of your problem.

After you've isolated the cause, do not use msconfig to permanently disable the process. Instead, if it is a service go to START - RUN and type: services.msc (then press enter) and disable the service OR, if it a program, you can download & run a simple app such as Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml) to enable, disable, or otherwise manage startup programs.

[mvollmers]

hmmm, good question.  it's been like this for a while.  I'll do the selective startup and see what flashes.  although, as I was struggling through windows writing this, another site wanted me to update my Java.  now, this is just off the cuff, but it sure seems like the whole system is a lot smoother right after I did that.  So, based on what I find from the selective startup, I suspect that perhaps some housekeeping is in order.  stupid Java...

[Allan]

Please stick with one support site or the other - your choice which. Without knowing what you're doing one of us can give you bad advice

[mvollmers]

sorry, meant that I was uploading some stuff and that webpage needed me to update my Java.  I'm going to do the selective startup today and see what that flags.