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I've been using a PC that I built here and it has been running very well for me for several years. However, a few months back I started to have issues where I find myself running out of RAM. After looking into the issue myself a bit, I've pretty much confirmed that the issue is not with my RAM itself, as I had no errors running RAMtest on it, and it's not with virtual RAM either, as I recently deleted a bunch of files just in case that were the case and in trying to fix it ended up turning off all virtual RAM paging, which caused programs to crash (since reverted, not an issue).

Ultimately, the problem boils down to this; something in the way my computer is working now is causing it to only ever use up to about 4 or 5 GB of RAM. This is a problem when I'm running multiple programs and/or running RAM-intensive games on my machine. How can I ensure that my computer isn't arbitrarily stopping far short of the actual installed RAM?

Here's my Task Manager and System Information

Here's my Task Manager and System Information showing less than 2GB used at 38% (the RAM used by programs lower in the list drops off really fast), and 14.2GB total physical memory with only 8.52GB available. I took this screenshot just after restarting my computer, without running any other programs (manually).

In case it's relevant to solving this, my OS is Microsoft Windows 10 Education 64 bit, motherboard is MSI Z170A TOMAHAWK AC (MS-7970), and processor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4008 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Edit: Performance/Memory tab here's the Performance/memory tab as requested in the comments. Once again shortly after a reboot, only my web browser (Vivaldi), task manager, and file browser (directory opus) are open, aside from programs that automatically open on startup.

RAMMap and task Mgr Here's a picture of RAMMap and my task manager, once again just after restarting with only RAMMap, Task Manager and Vivaldi (my browser) running, in addition to programs that open automatically on startup.

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    How did you arrive at the conclusion that less than 2 GB are used? The screenshot clearly shows that 40% (so ~6.4 GiB) are in use. // Please provide a screenshot of Task Manager’s “Performance” tab with the memory view active.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 8:54
  • You have Hyper-V enabled. Are you using memory in there, either using a VM or Docker? If so, system memory is reserved for Hyper-V which could explain what is happening.
    – LPChip
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 8:55
  • @LPChip Actually, the features showing means Hyper-V is not enabled. Otherwise you just get a hint that because a hypervisor is running they cannot be displayed.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 10:49
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    Author needs to clarify their question with some more information specifically a screenshot of RAMMap
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 11:34
  • @DanielB I reached that conclusion by looking at the amounts of memory used by the programs in the list, if you add the amounts of memory they say they're using it totals less than 2GB (I know the screenshot cuts off but everything below that drops off pretty quickly and the total is <2GB) Also, regarding Hyper-V, I'm not familiar with how it works but I used a VM in the past for college (linux) and have since removed it. I'm not familiar with RAMMap either but I'll look into it and see if I can figure out what people are looking for there.
    – Tyler Quesnel
    Commented Mar 26, 2021 at 17:58

1 Answer 1

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here is the link to the page that ultimately fixed the problem for me. My system is running windows 10 and the article is for windows 7, but that doesn't matter.

All I had to do was run msconfig , go to boot, advanced options, and uncheck the maximum memory box.

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