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I own two up to date computers with windows 10, with fairly different hardware, on both of them, windows fills the ram (99-100%) over time, usually after a month of run time. The first uses a hard drive; the second uses a SSD with low capacity + a hard drive.

When the ram is full, my programs are extremely slow and often freeze. When that happens, disk use also reaches 100% most of the time. I've found a temporary way to make my system usable, that is to launch a very ram intensive program multiple times, such as a video game, after leaving the computer running and closing the process, I have more ram available, and the computer is again usable.

Ram use and disk space on the task manager don't add up as you could imagine. This isn't due to malware; this is purely due to windows mismanaging ram.

Windows is using ram I don't want to be used, and I would like to make sure every unused ram is not used without my approval.

Changing the OS, hardware, or shutting down the system often aren't options for me.

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  • Wagnardsoft's Intelligent standby list cleaner (ISLC) can help free memory, if the issue is due to Windows garbage collectio/reallocation issues, wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1256 (though it won't ameliorate memory leaks). It seems to help with memory intensive tasks.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Mar 31 at 1:08

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You probably have a memory leak, although a very small one. Such a problem is very hard to detect.

Almost the only tool that can help is RAMMap. You should consult it whenever memory is full, although understanding the numbers is not always easy. You should also check in Task Manager if the swap space is increasing when it happens.

As the leak in this case is very small and takes a whole month to build up, the problem is more of an annoyance. The simplest solution is to do a cold reboot, perhaps once a week. Note that hibernation or sleep doesn't cause the used up memory to be released, only cold reboot will reinitialize the memory allocation.

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  • How to look at the swap space in task manager? I've been looking at RAMMap, task manager, resource monitor but I haven't been able to succeed so far to identify the issue. The processes that are common to the computers, except windows itself, are malwarebytes and avira which are also up to date, keepass, "7+ taskbar tweaker", chrome and brave browser. Sadly rebooting isn't an option. I thought that maybe preventing windows to "use unused ram" would solve the issue.
    – user9203881
    Commented Mar 30 at 14:01
  • You may find some info in Task Manager, Performance, Memory. Windows memory management is very good - an intervention may only make matters worse. Why reboot isn't an option?
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 30 at 14:10
  • Because I don't want to take the risk to lose some data that are in ram and I don't have the time to save or sort that data (countless notepads, spreadsheets, internet tabs with data in ram, dev environment with multiple programs, folders, files to open which I only have in my memory, etc). Plus the fact that my main computer takes hours to launch and the fear that it might not reboot while I have urgent work to do ,which already happen. Not worth it. Just want my system to run and to not use unused ram.
    – user9203881
    Commented Mar 30 at 14:28
  • In the task manager, it says 'used (compressed)':31.6 GB; Available 450 MB; validated 108/124 GB; Cache 437 MB; Paged 1.8 GB; Non paged pool 1.7 GB. Total used 31.6/31.9 GB (99%). All visible processes use less than 10 GB out of 32 GB. And disk use often at 100%, very often because of microsoft processes (system, update, services, etc)
    – user9203881
    Commented Mar 30 at 14:31
  • Your numbers show that you're really starved for RAM and Windows has started to compress RAM in an attempt to reduce usage. In an environment that is so choke-full of applications a memory leak is almost impossible to trace. With the boot taking hours, I suggest to envisage moving to a new computer, or to increase your RAM. However, for example, doubling your RAM may only give you 2 months of peace instead of one. The minimum you can do is to fully update Windows, all drivers and the applications that you use daily.
    – harrymc
    Commented Mar 30 at 14:42

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