Is Slow Windows 11 caused by a memory leak?
Is Slow Windows 11 caused by a memory leak?
Hello everyone! I've been using computers since Windows 98 SE and never experienced any RAM problems.
I upgraded from Win 10 to Win 11 using the bypass method (Haswell). Once it was configured, everything seemed quite smooth.
About five hours later, I realized I was consuming around 15.9GB of my 16GB Patriot DDR3 RAM.
I opened Task Manager eventually, and it showed no more than 40MB being used, even though the system reports 99% utilization.
I assumed a restart would help. It started at roughly 2.6GB and after about three hours it jumped to over 8GB, continuing to increase until it became unresponsive after several more hours.
Notably, no program ever exceeded 40MB of RAM usage.
Both Windows 10 and two Linux distributions didn't show this issue either.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I upgraded from version 10 to 11 using the bypass method (Haswell). If you upgraded via the internal upgrade route in Windows 10, you’ll need to reinstall Windows 11. This process often results in a corrupted OS, which is likely causing your memory leak problems. You can attempt sfc/scannow and system restores, but these won’t fix the memory leaks on Windows.
I switched from my i7-4770K+EVGA Z97 Stinger setup to an AM5 platform last year, moving to Windows 11 because Windows 10 was becoming unstable. Following this change is recommended since any temporary fixes are very time-consuming.
Moved the discussion from the Systems section to the Windows 11 part.
I upgraded from version 10 to 11 using the bypass method (Haswell). If you upgraded via the internal upgrade route in Windows 10, you’ll need to reinstall Windows 11. This process often results in a corrupted OS, which is likely causing your memory leak problems. You can attempt sfc/scannow and system restores, but these won’t fix the memory leaks on Windows.
I switched from my i7-4770K+EVGA Z97 Stinger setup to an AM5 platform last year, moving to Windows 11 because Windows 10 was becoming unstable with each release. Following this change is recommended since any temporary fixes are very time-consuming.
Moved the discussion from the Systems section to the Windows 11 part.
As far as I recall, you can't upgrade to version 11 through the screen on 10 that says your PC can't run it (regedit stuff). I didn’t try it when I was on 10. No, I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft and let Rufus handle the installation. I’m just doing regular internet tasks since the RAM issue is the problem. What options do you have besides upgrading to fix it? My setup is still functional.
The system is functioning properly. It's not a major concern regardless of whether my rig runs optimally due to its age. I was curious if this relates to the official upgraders in Windows 11 that pass the spec check. In any case, it's not a significant issue, and it's quite easy to restart every few hours.
windows performs a lot of tasks once it's reinstalled. Once idle, it tries to check every location on your drives for weak spots and fixes them.
the memory manager preloads programs into standby memory, which means windows only needs a small adjustment to treat them as active memory so they appear to load quickly.
additionally, windows now compresses data in memory before writing it to the pagefile.sys.
it's best to let the system rest for a while so all background processes can complete and settle.
note: you can use microsoft rammap64.exe to view what's in standby memory. You can also use the empty menu option in this program to clear the list of preloaded applications. I've noticed windows sometimes loads games that you haven't played in a while, just in case you want to revisit them.
This week I experienced memory leakage where after a few hours my RAM reached 99% usage. Possible causes included a Windows update KB5055523 (the system received that update twice in a couple of days) and an Nvidia update, which I later rolled back to an earlier driver. I also noticed Phone Link was consuming high memory, so I turned it off and my RAM now runs around 30-35%. I'm unsure if the updates were responsible but currently everything seems fine.
All right everyone, as Lutfij mentioned it would be best to get more updated information, but that's not possible at the moment. Colin, you're likely aware that the phone link feature can be disabled in startup programs. I discovered this the hard way in 1998—without knowing what each setting does. Modern Windows has even more options, making things more complicated. It was worth a shot to check if it could be resolved.