2MB free only?

[Jokniserous]

I have an Acer Aspire E 15 6GB DDR3 L Ram, 1GB HDD and an Intel Core i5-4210U 1.7GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz.  My computer runs very very slowly, and someone suggested looking at the Resource Monitor.  Then I found this (refer to screenshot attached) - only 2MB of free RAM.  What?!?!! How can I increase my free RAM, and is this what is causing my computer to be slow?

Thanks in advance,
Jokniserous

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]

[DaveLembke]

2144MB is actually available. So your not out of memory.

Computers can run slow when they run too hot. I would check into system temperatures using speedfan or another tool to see if your system is running hot and as a means of avoiding melt down it might be thermal throttling which kills performance as the CPU will be driven lightly to avoid creating excess heat since there is a problem getting rid of heat.

Windows should have had added to it a thermal throttling warning to warn people that their computers are running too warm and so the system is throttling to protect itself which impacts performance. But they dont unless a 3rd party program or you monitor and look for throttling with other tools.

If the CPU is running over 70C then its likely throttling. To correct for this you need to remove dust, or add a cooling pad, or have new thermal compound installed, or new heatsink if heatsink failed, or new cooling fan if its not spinning to 100% speed causing reduced airflow.

http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

Also guessing you meant you have a 1TB hard drive vs 1GB in your description

Here is a video showing how to check for thermal throttling with a tool AIDA64 Extreme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fY33oFBY_w

[patio]

Just so you know...every tab in Chrome takes up resources...this was their magic fix to speed it up so to speak...

I use Process Explorer which is a bit more advanced to check running processes etc...i believe there is still a Free ver. available.

[Salmon Trout]

Windows should have had added to it a thermal throttling warning to warn people that their computers are running too warm and so the system is throttling to protect itself which impacts performance. But they dont unless a 3rd party program or you monitor and look for throttling with other tools.

I used Intel Extreme Tuning Utility which shows an alert when thermal throttling is happening, and logs it (I think) but you know what I did? I cleaned the dust out of my CPU heatsink.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-

[Salmon Trout]

I have an Acer Aspire E 15 6GB DDR3 L Ram

Looks like 6 GB to me.

[strollin]

There appears to be a bug in the resource monitor.  It's true that in that one place it shows 2MB free but in other places on the screen it shows Free memory as 2146MB which is 2GB not 2MB.

The fact that you have 2GB of free memory indicates that a shortage of memory is NOT the cause for your computer to be running slow.  Can you post screenshots of the CPU and Disk tabs of the Resource Monitor?

[Jokniserous]

Re

There appears to be a bug in the resource monitor.  It's true that in that one place it shows 2MB free but in other places on the screen it shows Free memory as 2146MB which is 2GB not 2MB.

The fact that you have 2GB of free memory indicates that a shortage of memory is NOT the cause for your computer to be running slow.  Can you post screenshots of the CPU and Disk tabs of the Resource Monitor?

Here they are

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]

[Salmon Trout]

There appears to be a bug in the resource monitor.  It's true that in that one place it shows 2MB free but in other places on the screen it shows Free memory as 2146MB which is 2GB not 2MB.

There is no bug. The Resource Monitor is showing 2 MB free memory, and 2144 MB "standby" memory. Free memory is unused by any program, and standby memory is memory that is currently not in use. The total of memory used, standby memory, and free memory will always add up to close to the installed RAM because of the way Windows uses all installed RAM.

[Salmon Trout]

in other places on the screen it shows Free memory as 2146MB which is 2GB not 2MB

Notice it says 2146 MB available (not 'free'). The available memory figure will always be the total of the standby memory (2144 MB here) and free memory (2 MB). Free memory can sometimes get quite small, especially on a 6 GB system that is being heavily used, but that doesn't mean you are "running out of memory".

To the OP - you have one third of your RAM as "available" memory. I do not think this is the cause of your machine running slowly. The disk figures look a bit suspicious.