Greetings all,

PC SPECIFICATIONS:
Intel i7-860 2.80 GHz CPU
Corsair H50 CPU cooling system
Asus P7P55D-E Pro MoBo
Galaxy nVidia GeForce GT 430 PCI-E 1MB DDR3 RAM (CUDA Disabled)
Crucial 8GB PC3 1333MHz DDR3 RAM (Dual Channel)
Western Digital 500GB 3G SATA HDD x 2 = 1TB Storage
Case: Ultra Rogue M925 full tower
PSU: Thermaltake SP-850M 850W Smart M Series
Micro$oft Win7 Pro 64 bit
BOINC v7.4.42 (x64)

Since updating to the latest version of BOINC, listed above, I have been observing a strange phenomenon with my RAM. It will start out with greater than 50% used and gradually level off to about 35-37% which is normal usage for this PC. This happens every time I restart my PC and/or BOINC.

I have done the usual checks: malware, virus, etc. I usually do this once a month anyway or as in this case, if I see something that does not seem right.

I do plan on upgrading to one of the latest generation i7 processors and new MB, hopefully next month. Not sure if I will use new RAM or not, it all depends on funds and if this RAM is alright. I know it will run in the MB I'm looking to get. But, if it may be determined that this RAM is starting to flake out, then new RAM it is.

If anyone has any ideas about this "problem", I would greatly appreciate hearing them. Thank you in advance! :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

If anyone has any ideas about this "problem" ...

'Problem':
You see 50% of memory (4 GB) is used when Windows starts?
Later (minutes?) the used RAM is less (35%)

Your 'Solution':
You think that RAM chips may be bad? (Why??)


If you find it strange that your RAM is used and then freed:
It's obvious that some program uses RAM at start.
I guess it is some Antivirus (making startup scan)

Check which process uses RAM
("Show processes from all users" - most probably will be process from the 'User': 'SYSTEM')
 

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

If anyone has any ideas about this "problem" ...

-[ snip ]-

If you find it strange that your RAM is used and then freed:
It's obvious that some program uses RAM at start.
I guess it is some Antivirus (making startup scan)

Check which process uses RAM

-[ snip ]-
 

Greetings BilBg,

Obviously you did not understand what I was saying in my post, so I will reiterate: :(

The thing I find strange is that since I updated to the latest version of BOINC, when I restart my PC an abnormally larger amount of RAM is being used initially. Then after a few minutes, or so, the RAM usage settles into what the machine normally uses when BOINC is running.

I have done scans for malware and viruses and have checked Task Manager often to see what may be causing this. I have found nothing amiss so I came here to find if there is something else I can do to figure this 'problem' out. I quote the word "problem" because I don't know that it IS a problem. I only know that this has only started since updating BOINC... or perhaps since doing some Microsoft updates... Come to think of it, this may have started after doing MS updates. Ok, I don't have a restore point before those updates since I have done 2 since then.

Ah HAHHHH! It's Microsoft's fault. ;)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Obviously you did not understand what I was saying in my post, so I will reiterate: :(

The thing I find strange is that since I updated to the latest version of BOINC, when I restart my PC an abnormally larger amount of RAM is being used initially. Then after a few minutes, or so, the RAM usage settles into what the machine normally uses when BOINC is running.

I think what BilBg was trying to say is that how do you know it is due to BOINC? Have you tried starting your machine without BOINC in startup, and do you observe the same or different behavior?

And why do you perceive more RAM usage during startup by any application as a problem? You, yourself used quotes around the word problem because you're not sure it is a problem, but you're asking for help/insight and it is confusing to us why "abnormally larger amount of RAM" being used is a problem. What is 'abnormal'? A few MB? A GB?

We need more data to go along with the observation to determine what it is you're seeing.

Obviously you did not understand what I was saying in my post

You said the same as now: "since I updated to the latest version of BOINC ... abnormally larger amount of RAM is being used initially"

This statement I didn't / don't believe.
If BOINC was causing this you would easy see it is the culprit - as the size of BOINC / projects processes are visible and will be big (but you didn't say you see this)
BOINC is not some hidden system process.

It have to be some process or driver that uses "abnormally larger amount of RAM initially"
I really don't know how to check the RAM used by drivers

Do you see all the processes? (and in which programs?)

E.g. many Services run in svchost.exe ("Generic Host Process for Win32 Services")
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-svchost-exe#1TC=windows-7

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Greetings BilBg,

Obviously you did not understand what I was saying in my post, so I will reiterate: :(

The thing I find strange is that since I updated to the latest version of BOINC, when I restart my PC an abnormally larger amount of RAM is being used initially. Then after a few minutes, or so, the RAM usage settles into what the machine normally uses when BOINC is running.

I have done scans for malware and viruses and have checked Task Manager often to see what may be causing this. I have found nothing amiss so I came here to find if there is something else I can do to figure this 'problem' out. I quote the word "problem" because I don't know that it IS a problem. I only know that this has only started since updating BOINC... or perhaps since doing some Microsoft updates... Come to think of it, this may have started after doing MS updates. Ok, I don't have a restore point before those updates since I have done 2 since then.

Ah HAHHHH! It's Microsoft's fault. ;)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

The signs of RAM going bad are generally not increased memory usage. You would be looking at a system lockup, random reboots, or apps crashing.

You said you have checked task manager often. Alright. What is it you are actually looking at in task manager? You simply listed that your system was going from 50% to ~35% memory usage. That leads me to think you are only looking at the Performance tab & not the Processes tab. Where you can enabled various memory options for programs & sort by the size.
Another handy took is the Resource Monitor. Which you can even open from the Task Manager Performance tab.

Given you have stated you have 8GB of RAM & memory usage goes from about 4GB down to about 2.8GB. Then finding something eating up over 1GB of RAM should take only a moment.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

... Processes tab. Where you can enabled various memory options for programs & sort by the size.

Uh oh, I forget that only a few columns are shown by default
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-task-manager-memory-columns-mean#1TC=windows-7

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Greetings,

@ OzzFan & Hal9000

Ok, let's drop the word 'problem' and call it an anomaly as I believe I did in my first post. Nope, I said "phenomenon", but 'anomaly' fits this better. So, let's discuss this anomaly.

First of all, I no longer am convinced that this anomaly started with the update of BOINC. As I mentioned in my reply to BilBg I'm thinking it started after doing some Windows updates from Microsoft several days ago. I have now done 2 more MS updates since then which does not allow me to go back with a restore. The last restore point I have is for the last update I did. Contrary to what I thought, restore points do not stack upon the HDD as time goes by. I found that I have 1 or 2 restore points at any given time.

I have a CPU/RAM usage widget on my desktop. I watch it as the PC is loading windows and whatever...

SYMPTOMS:
1. After BOINC starts, upon rebooting the PC, all 8 cores are at 100% and the RAM is at 57% to 59%.
2. As the PC has finished, the RAM usage gradually goes down to 26% to 36% usage.
3. While the RAM usage is high, I start Task Manager and check RAM usage on the Processes tab. I see nothing out of the ordinary in Task Manager.
4. The PC runs as it should be running.

I have run Malwarebytes and CCleaner (which I do about once a month anyway). No viruses or malware are found.

Before the updates mentioned above, the RAM usage would gradually go to about 26% to 36% and remain there after everything is loaded after a reboot. At this moment RAM usage is at 39% which is about normal. It will gradually go up as time goes by, it always has. I assume that would be considered memory fragmentation, due to some poor programming somewhere, and the RAM can no longer be allocated so it stays "used"?

Anyway... Since I no longer believe that BOINC is the cause of this anomaly, if you guys want me to just shut up I will. ;) Since Windows 10 is said to be on a go for a Summer release, I will just live with this anomaly and upgrade to Win10, after I build me a new PC with a current generation i7 processor and MB to match.

Thanks guys! :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Here's something to look for:

In your task manager, go to the processes tab and check the box at the bottom that says show processes from all users. Click on the memory column so that you can see the process that is using the most memory at the top. On my work machine the top process right now is FileMaker Pro at about 200MB. Look for svchost.exe and note how much memory it's using. For me that's about 70MB. Now check for windows updates. On my computer, svchost.exe will peak at over 1.8GB before settling down.

I did the same thing on Windows 8.1 and svchost.exe only goes from about 25MB to about 70MB. I would expect Windows 10 to behave similarly.

Here's something to look for:

In your task manager, go to the processes tab and check the box at the bottom that says show processes from all users. Click on the memory column so that you can see the process that is using the most memory at the top. On my work machine the top process right now is FileMaker Pro at about 200MB. Look for svchost.exe and note how much memory it's using. For me that's about 70MB. Now check for windows updates. On my computer, svchost.exe will peak at over 1.8GB before settling down.

I did the same thing on Windows 8.1 and svchost.exe only goes from about 25MB to about 70MB. I would expect Windows 10 to behave similarly.

Most services & background functions run under svchost.exe I have 13 instances of it right now.
Normally for me the item using most of memory is my internet browser. That probably doesn't apply to their system. As it is not common to put that in a machines startup.

If the OP wants to spend the time to try and find out what is going on it can be done. It just requires further investigation. Perhaps using more detailed tools. Such as Microsoft's Process Explorer.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Ok, let's drop the word 'problem' and call it an anomaly as I believe I did in my first post. Nope, I said "phenomenon", but 'anomaly' fits this better. So, let's discuss this anomaly.

Sure, no worries on exact verbiage. Just trying to get a handle on your level of alarm vs. curiosity.

The last restore point I have is for the last update I did. Contrary to what I thought, restore points do not stack upon the HDD as time goes by. I found that I have 1 or 2 restore points at any given time.

This is actually controlled by the amount of space reserved for restore points. FYI, if you click on Start, then right-click on My Computer and go to Properties, then click on System Protection in the left-hand column, you'll see the System Properties dialog box. There should be a button there labeled "Configure..." where you can adjust disk space. Obviously increasing disk space allows for more restore points but will consume more disk space.

I have a CPU/RAM usage widget on my desktop. I watch it as the PC is loading windows and whatever...

SYMPTOMS:
1. After BOINC starts, upon rebooting the PC, all 8 cores are at 100% and the RAM is at 57% to 59%.
2. As the PC has finished, the RAM usage gradually goes down to 26% to 36% usage.
3. While the RAM usage is high, I start Task Manager and check RAM usage on the Processes tab. I see nothing out of the ordinary in Task Manager.
4. The PC runs as it should be running.

What you have described here so far as I have observed, is normal behavior for most PCs. As things are loaded into RAM and execute, then settle on a specific in-memory footprint (other code or data or both are often removed from RAM or paged out to disk, even with plenty of RAM available).

This is the only piece that has me somewhat puzzled by your perplextion and/or alarm and/or curiosity.

I have run Malwarebytes and CCleaner (which I do about once a month anyway). No viruses or malware are found.

This was another confusing bit to me. Viruses and malware typically manifest themselves in rather obvious ways, such as hijacking your browser's homepage or redirecting internet searches through specific sites. I wouldn't relate the behavior you're observing with malicious software.

Before the updates mentioned above, the RAM usage would gradually go to about 26% to 36% and remain there after everything is loaded after a reboot. At this moment RAM usage is at 39% which is about normal. It will gradually go up as time goes by, it always has. I assume that would be considered memory fragmentation, due to some poor programming somewhere, and the RAM can no longer be allocated so it stays "used"?

As for RAM usage increasing over time, that is explained by programs holding more code or data active in RAM as you or other processes use them.

Anyway... Since I no longer believe that BOINC is the cause of this anomaly, if you guys want me to just shut up I will. ;)

Nothing wrong with being curious, and certainly no reason to not ask questions. :-) It was simply the way most of us read into your tone, I think, that made us question why you found this behavior odd.

Obviously from what you say, you haven't observed this behavior before. Now you have me quite curious too, because it is something I have observed and I wonder why you haven't. ;-)

-[ snip ]-

Anyway... Since I no longer believe that BOINC is the cause of this anomaly, if you guys want me to just shut up I will. ;)

Nothing wrong with being curious, and certainly no reason to not ask questions. :-) It was simply the way most of us read into your tone, I think, that made us question why you found this behavior odd.

Tone? What tone? Why in the world does the world think I have a "tone" when I post things? I don't have a tone until I get accused of having a tone. Then when it is repeated that I have a tone, I GET A TONE. ;) I did not and do not have a negative tone. :)

Obviously from what you say, you haven't observed this behavior before. Now you have me quite curious too, because it is something I have observed and I wonder why you haven't. ;-)

Let me see if I've got this straight: .oO(<- that is the most overused statement every created ;) ) The way I understand your statement above is that what I am now seeing is 'normal' for a PC when it boots up? So, all these years this PC has not been booting 'normally'? Weird! I now wonder what changed. If you believe that this is normal for a PC when booting, I won't worry about it. The PC does not seem to be running adversely in any way. And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I plan on upgrading it next month anyway. It's 3 generations behind the times. :D It has served me well. :)

Thanks OzzFan and everyone! :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

[edit]
I almost forgot. I checked the System Protection and it is currently using 8.22 GB out of 10 GB. I assume that there should be more space allocated for more than 1 or 2 restore points?
[/edit]

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Siran d'Vel'nahr

open up the run command on the start menu then TYPE msconfig
when the console open click the start up tab and make shore you have selective start up check box checked .
Once you have the start up tab open look and see what is starting up .
You can then uncheck anything you may suspect may be causing the over useage of ram at start up

You can try unchecking all of them but 1 and restart the system and then open up the msconfig console and keep adding each thing by the check box
It's a slow way to figure out what is causing the problem . It's called a selective start up and you will have to restart each time also when you restart a screen will open telling you you are using a secltective start up just click don't show me this again or ok can't remember what it actually says as i just click yes go away i know blah blah .

I can't tell you what to uncheck in the msconfig console as people have different things running .

Some things you will need to have running for all windows functions but untill you have figured out witch program is doing it don't worry to much if you get silly messages like this has failed to load , (it's probably because you disabled it in the start up console )

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Things that can case your problem .

If you have office on your system you may see what you are seeing as office will load and then some things will shut down once it's started until they are needed .

Antivirus can also do this if it starts a scan on start up

And there are many other programs that will do the same thing start up and then stop once the system is going all normal and the way you check is to go into the MSCONFIG console to see what is starting up on start up

Also windows update will do this

A home network can also do this as it makes all the connections and drops the ones that no longer are needed

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Anyway... Since I no longer believe that BOINC is the cause of this anomaly, if you guys want me to just shut up I will. ;)

Nothing wrong with being curious, and certainly no reason to not ask questions. :-) It was simply the way most of us read into your tone, I think, that made us question why you found this behavior odd.

Tone? What tone? Why in the world does the world think I have a "tone" when I post things? I don't have a tone until I get accused of having a tone. Then when it is repeated that I have a tone, I GET A TONE. ;) I did not and do not have a negative tone. :)

I never said you had a negative tone. I simply said we were trying to read your tone. Everyone has a tone. Sometimes tone does not come across very well in text.

Obviously from what you say, you haven't observed this behavior before. Now you have me quite curious too, because it is something I have observed and I wonder why you haven't. ;-)

Let me see if I've got this straight: .oO(<- that is the most overused statement every created ;) ) The way I understand your statement above is that what I am now seeing is 'normal' for a PC when it boots up? So, all these years this PC has not been booting 'normally'? Weird!

I remember in the days of DOS, when I would try to manually optimize the Upper Memory Area for best loading of my TSRs and device drivers so that I could squeeze out enough room in the 640K Conventional Memory for applications and games.

While playing around with loading TSRs into Upper Memory Blocks, I learned that when a program executed, it's memory footprint was much larger than it's TSR size, and this would sometimes cause TSRs to load low despite there being a large enough UMB to fit the program into. I also learned that popular memory managers such as QEMM and Netroom/386Max would log the final amount of memory used by the TSR and basically "lie" to that application on how much UMB space was available so that it would load high.

Yes, I am saying that it is quite normal for applications to use more RAM during startup. I am not saying your observations are wrong, nor am I saying your PCs haven't been booting 'normally' (whatever that means).

[edit]
I almost forgot. I checked the System Protection and it is currently using 8.22 GB out of 10 GB. I assume that there should be more space allocated for more than 1 or 2 restore points?
[/edit]

I would imagine 10GB is plenty for more than 2 restore points. Not sure if Windows deletes older restore points after a certain amount of time.

[edit]
I almost forgot. I checked the System Protection and it is currently using 8.22 GB out of 10 GB. I assume that there should be more space allocated for more than 1 or 2 restore points?
[/edit]

I would imagine 10GB is plenty for more than 2 restore points. Not sure if Windows deletes older restore points after a certain amount of time.

Looking at a Windows 7 machine here, System Protection is using 9 GB currently and is allowed to use 10 GB - so that seems like a default setting.

Opening the System Restore tool, it only shows me one available restore point - but checking the box "Show more restore points" (below, left) reveals five more, so there are six in total, created automatically once a week and covering a month and a half in total.

That reminds me - it's been more than a month since I installed security updates. Oops...

System Protection is using 9 GB currently and is allowed to use 10 GB - so that seems like a default setting.

10 GB may be 1% of 1000 GB disk
So if you both have 1 TB HDD ...
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/how-much-disk-space-does-system-restore-require

(It seems the default to be 1% on Windows XP - checked on a computer that I think I left this on default)

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

System Protection is using 9 GB currently and is allowed to use 10 GB - so that seems like a default setting.

10 GB may be 1% of 1000 GB disk
So if you both have 1 TB HDD ...
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/how-much-disk-space-does-system-restore-require

(It seems the default to be 1% on Windows XP - checked on a computer that I think I left this on default)

That particular machine has a drive - more exactly, an active partition - shown as 581 GB

Greetings everyone,

I would like to thank everyone that has commented and/or made suggestions to figure out this anomaly. I have some great news... :)

UPDATE:
I have been watching my RAM usage creep up slowly since my last reboot. The system started out at about 26-27% usage with BOINC and Comodo IceDragon running. What is IceDragon you ask? It is a browser created with an older version of Firefox's open source code. I switched to it from Firefox because of a problem with my website in Firefox that I have not figured out yet. Go figure... :\

Anyway... My updated widget is currently showing 61% RAM usage. I looked at the processes tab in Task Manager and found out that something called 'sidebar.exe' is using a HUGE amount of RAM, 1,775,460K right now. I did a Google on it and evidently over time it uses more and more RAM.

There is a Blog I found where the guy running it created a batch file to do a scheduled restart of sidebar.exe to prevent the excessive use of RAM. Someone, another sysadmin, sent him an email that has created the same operation only doing it with a .vbs file. It eliminates the little black command prompt window from displaying.

I know absolutely ZERO about VBS. Any thoughts on how I can implement this scheduled restart of that annoying little RAM thief using that VBS file? I can copy/paste the VBS code if needed. Or, does anyone have any other thoughts about 'sidebar.exe' and what to do about it?

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

I think sidebar.exe is the Windows tool which manages and runs 'gadgets' on the desktop - first included in Vista, also in Windows 7. I turned mine off years ago...