The problem: Every time I boot it, I get high RAM usage errors within the first 2-3 minutes even without ever starting any apps/programs. I have disabled almost all "startup items" in msconfig and still have the problem. The usage will also be quite erratic during this time. After some amount of time it finally settles down with no explanation. M$ Security Essentials and Malwarebytes don't find any software problems.
The Specs:
Acer Aspire One 722
AMD C60 1.0 GHz
4 Gb RAM DDR3
Windows 7 Home Premium
TIA for any ideas
Is windows updated fully?
Yes. Only optional updates left.
So what programs do start on startup?
Have you done a memtest? It could be a hardware issue.
I have not. Didn't think it was all that old. Will look into it.
Open resource manager and see what programs are using a lot of ram. Could have a virus or something. Could also be faulty ram, as suggested. It could be that one of the sticks came unseated at some point and so you are working with 2gb of ram or something like that. Look to see what is using ram, look to see how much your os sees, etc.
@djd34d1 are you runing 32 bit or 64 bit Windows?
@1920_1080p_1280_720p It reads 4Gb all the time, but i guess an unseated stick isn't out of the question. Don't remember seeing things too much out of the ordinary on the lists in the resource manager but will look again.
@Kai 64 bit full home premium.
Could be something nasty running in the background that you cant see. Do a good clean in safe mode, or from a linux distro etc.
Or just back up and re-install windows then update everything. ~ probably easier.
When you open resource manager, on the mem column click it, it will sort by most used. I think you actually have to click once to sort by least, then click again to sort by most used.
Been tossing around just running Linux on it but if I do a clean install of Windows I would probably just wait for 10 (haven't convinced myself that's worth it either). Thought malwarebytes was pretty good about catching even day zero nasties as far as that goes. Will take a closer look around the filesystem weird things lying about and report back.
Seems like I should have known that little secret.
May want to try 32 bit since it is a netbook and you won't go above 4GB anyway.
If your going to reinstall that is ^
I think I would go Linux before I went 32bit Windows. If I'm thinking correctly, most of the programs I would keep M$ for limit their use in the 32 bit version (if there is one). Otherwise I would be completely satisfied the F/OSS version of all of them.
For whatever reason, I'm trying to talk myself into fixing the problem and keeping windows, but through this discussion I'm slowly talking myself out of it.
I know very few programs that are 64 bit only.
I have an Aspire One 725, 2Gb or RAM. Everything else is the same spec as yours. My memory issues were caused by the Windows Update service, which maxed out the ram and made most other programs freeze, fail to respond, or crash. The fix was to deactivate that service. And deactivate it again after every manual update.
Is it a memory leak with WU on Windows 7? I don't know, but it absolutely killed my productivity, couldn't even open one doc or pdf without having to wait 2 minutes for each click.
install crunchbang. problem solved.
I have an Acer Aspire One D257, lower specs than yours and Win7 Starter but I had the same problem. After about 1.5 years it became annoying to do anything on it. Booting, opening Firefox, LibreOffice, etc. took so long (one time I stopped the time, took about 20sec to open Firefox and an additional 10sec to load Google as the default start page).
Re-installing Windows, setting it back to factory settings, nothing worked. Out of frustration I installed Mint 17 and it was way faster and more responsive than before. The best experience - snappiness, loading times - I got with the latest version of Lubuntu. It still wasn't as fast and responsive as I would've liked it to be but I was able to get some light work done of university without stretching my patience.
