Just received a complaint that this one computer was acting slow to respond.
I switched user leaving them logged on and logged on as myself where I have tools to diagnose further. The gadget I use for monitoring CPU and Memory use which isnt on user profiles but only for my use showed that 93% of the RAM was in use and a page file that is the largest I have ever seen on a system with only 4GB RAM at 12GB in size of which 95% was in use.
Ran AVG Virus Scan and it came up clean. Ran Malwarebytes and also clean.
Looked in Task Manager to see what process is eating up RAM and Virtual Memory ( Paging ) and even when checked for all users it didnt seem to add up correctly. Usually when checking the checkbox for all users it will refresh and show all memory allocations to processes. But it just doesnt add up correctly. How is 3723MB in use and the process total as reported by task manager for all users far lesser than that with it all totaling 726,408 which is 726.408 MB, so where is the other 2996.592MB being used.
I even went up and used the refresh thinking maybe it didnt refresh to show memory use for all users and nope, it still reported really low compared what what was actually in use, so what process is able to eat up 2996.592MB and also make for an insanely bloated page file that is almost 12GB in size
I ended up switching back to the user account and they had firefox open with multiple tabs open as well as adobe reader handing a PDF file.
What was VERY strange was that one of the tabs had a very strange (unicode?) characters alternating with M [] I [] C [] R [] O [] S [] O [] F [] T . With Unicode characters not supported maybe, as seen in the PIC attached for Firefox tabs they had open.
But I closed out Firefox and switched back to my profile and saw just a small amount of memory freed up. The issue with the huge memory use and page file was still happening and task manager reporting it very low usage compared to actual.
I switched logging back onto them and clocked out Adobe Reader next and then switched back to my profile, once again a small amount of memory freed up, but something was still holding onto a ton of RAM and making for an huge page file.
Next step log them off and only have myself logged on, but dont reboot and see what happens. All of a sudden everything back to normal. Their profile had something running in memory that ate up a ton of RAM and I have no clue what it was.
Logged back on as them to see if the problem would come back and problem gone.
I suppose I could have just told themt o reboot the computer, but the minute I saw insane amounts of RAM unusually in use with a massively bloated page file, I was on the hunt for that one program or process that was causing this and it wasnt to be found. Task Manager didnt even report it. Yet it was a real problem. The Hard Drive LED was on solid and the system was slow, yet the CPU use was only about 15% with 85% available.
So question I have is.... is there a better memory usage tool out there to see what processes are consuming memory for all users as well as ability to see what processes are tied to page memory that will show what the culprit is when Task manager itself cant even report the info? I am thinking maybe no because a 3rd party tool might use the same API that Task Manager uses to report and so it might report the same incorrect info, but if a tool doesnt take a shortcut in using the same API and they have their own method of tracking memory use, maybe then the next time something like this happens I can pin point the culprits vs just logging off and back on the user or a system reboot which to me I really like to know the cause of the issue vs being lazy and taking the etch-a-sketch approach of a reboot. Because obviously something really went wrong here and I dont know what went wrong and why, and I have a hard time just ignoring something like this because I know it will be back to haunt this system again if its happened in the past with no corrective action taken to cure it of this potential future problem.[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]
