W10.1511 - System and compressed memory | High Memory Usage

[Seymour Heiney]

If this has been posted before, I apologize. I did a forum search but it returned nothing to help answer my query.

A little history for context: about 4 weeks ago, I upgraded my Lenovo laptop to W10, build 10240 from W7. About 2 weeks ago, I did a clean install of W10, build 10240, then last Thursday I upgraded to W10.1511. Two days ago, I did a clean install of W10.1511 because I had been experimenting with various AV products, and now that I'm fairly settled on one product, I wanted to start clean to get rid of all the crud that remained behind from the other AV products.

All upgrades and clean installs went smoothly and I have experienced no problems. One thing I do notice more than with previous incarnations is that the System and compressed memory service is taking up a noticeable amount of memory, like between 110 and 120 mb, whereas before it had to be way less or I would have noticed it as I've been tracking system usage fairly closely. Not saying it didn't spike like this before, but I didn't notice it. Now it is consistent between 110 - 120 mb.

Does anyone know why this service would consume so much RAM, or at least manifest itself as "more than usual" at this point? Perhaps this is normal and it was abnormally low in prior builds for my rig. I'm just not sure and looking to see if anyone a) knows its true purpose and b) how much RAM it should normally consume.

Thanks for reading,

Seymour

 

[Gideon]

I do not even have that service.

 

[Trouble]

Mine stays consistently around 105. I don't consider that to be an excessive amount of memory considering what opening a typical browser window uses.

 

[Seymour Heiney]

Trouble, thanks for replying. I'll accept this as being "normal" then. It isn't causing any issues that I can see at the moment, but it is curious why I'm only noticing it now as being this high. I think I would have noticed it before as I was recently testing different AV footprints and this particular service is consistently coming in as the second largest consumer of memory, behind either an AV or a browser (Firefox in my case).

Many other worse things in life to worry about. Thanks again!

 

[davehc]

Mine sticks at around 15mbs. But I think it depends on your usage.

This from Ms, talking about Windows 10:
"
Memory Manager Improvements:

In Windows 10, we have added a new concept in the Memory Manager called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. This means that when Memory Manager feels memory pressure, it will compress unused pages instead of writing them to disk. This reduces the amount of memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to maintain more applications in physical memory at a time. This also helps provide better responsiveness across Windows 10. The compression store lives in the System process’s working set. Since the system process holds the store in memory, its working set grows larger exactly when memory is being made available for other processes. This is visible in Task Manager and the reason the System process appears to be consuming more memory than previous releases."

 

[TonicTickle]

I just did the November Update of Windows 10 and since then I have lots of issues using my PC. It becomes very slow and unresponsive and according to the Task Manager I get 99% Memory consumption with this Service.
I have 16GB RAM so I got confused how it can show 99% with around 300MB of main consumption of this Service.
I didn't have this issue before but it seems the System and compressed memory service is causing my issues. It happens right from the start when I log into Windows 10 it can become unresponsive then already but mainly I get this issue when I start use Microsoft Edge. When looking in the Microsoft Feedback I see lots of complaints about having high usage with this Service. I hope there will be a fix soon. Windows 10 is becoming unusable for me like this Yesterday I started one Game then Exit it and tried to use my Task Manager and I received lots of memory errors.

 

[TonicTickle]

I read about page files and I did an experiment today by setting the page file to none on both my SSD and HDD and all of a sudden the issue seems to be "fixed"

Now my Memory calms down by about 18% and the System and memory Service only takes 0.xx CPU and Memory all of a sudden.

 

[chadmk]

I just did the November Update of Windows 10 and since then I have lots of issues using my PC. It becomes very slow and unresponsive and according to the Task Manager I get 99% Memory consumption with this Service.
I have 16GB RAM so I got confused how it can show 99% with around 300MB of main consumption of this Service.
I didn't have this issue before but it seems the System and compressed memory service is causing my issues. It happens right from the start when I log into Windows 10 it can become unresponsive then already but mainly I get this issue when I start use Microsoft Edge. When looking in the Microsoft Feedback I see lots of complaints about having high usage with this Service. I hope there will be a fix soon. Windows 10 is becoming unusable for me like this Yesterday I started one Game then Exit it and tried to use my Task Manager and I received lots of memory errors.

View attachment 1671

From your screenshot it doesn't appear that your system is recognizing anywhere near 16GB of RAM... From what I can see, I would be surprised if your machine was using even 8GB.. I too run 16GB of RAM and came across this forum while trying to find out why this process is currently taking up around 3GB (3,100MB) on my machine... However, even with this outrageous usage, I am still only utilizing 51% of my available RAM. I think your issue may be something else entirely, 217MB seems like a fairly conservative usage for this process. I would check that your RAM is secure and fully functioning before anything else.

As a secondary observation, your disk is 100%, which also would effect your performance. It could be a fluke at the time you took the screenshot, bot likely not, in which case a faster drive would be just as important as more RAM being available to your machine.

 

[chadmk]

Mine sticks at around 15mbs. But I think it depends on your usage.

This from Ms, talking about Windows 10:
"
Memory Manager Improvements:

In Windows 10, we have added a new concept in the Memory Manager called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. This means that when Memory Manager feels memory pressure, it will compress unused pages instead of writing them to disk. This reduces the amount of memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to maintain more applications in physical memory at a time. This also helps provide better responsiveness across Windows 10. The compression store lives in the System process’s working set. Since the system process holds the store in memory, its working set grows larger exactly when memory is being made available for other processes. This is visible in Task Manager and the reason the System process appears to be consuming more memory than previous releases."

Is it also normal for this process to reach over 3GB of utilization, even while minimal applications are currently open on the system?

 

[chadmk]

Mine stays consistently around 105. I don't consider that to be an excessive amount of memory considering what opening a typical browser window uses.

View attachment 1590

What about over 3GB? And do you now what would cause such a high usage? TY

 

[TonicTickle]

From your screenshot it doesn't appear that your system is recognizing anywhere near 16GB of RAM... From what I can see, I would be surprised if your machine was using even 8GB.. I too run 16GB of RAM and came across this forum while trying to find out why this process is currently taking up around 3GB (3,100MB) on my machine... However, even with this outrageous usage, I am still only utilizing 51% of my available RAM. I think your issue may be something else entirely, 217MB seems like a fairly conservative usage for this process. I would check that your RAM is secure and fully functioning before anything else.

As a secondary observation, your disk is 100%, which also would effect your performance. It could be a fluke at the time you took the screenshot, bot likely not, in which case a faster drive would be just as important as more RAM being available to your machine.

I was copying or moving files while the screenshot.

My issue seems not gone 100%. It's interesting because at start of Windows 10 (since the Fall Update) it can already have a high memory usage like 70 or 80% when just login. Then I restart and at login it's around 20% and stays that way. My Task Manager always shows me 16GB RAM and a high usage which isn't reflected in the Task Manager processes itself.

Right now I have a "good" usage with "just" around 50% of Memory and everything works fine which on the next restart might not anymore and then it will be over 80% again and then I only need to open Chrome or Edge with some Tabs and BAM it's 99% Memory usage. For me this has to do with the Windows 10 Fall Update as it was fine just before that and now I need to restart my PC all the time until the Memory shows below 20% when logging in and then I can work and it stays at around 20 - 60%. So my current workaround is one Restart when the memory usage is already very high when logging into Windows.

 

[chadmk]

Do you have other users the have access to this computer? Try looking under the "users" tab rather than processes to see usage for all users.

 

[TonicTickle]

Do you have other users the have access to this computer? Try looking under the "users" tab rather than processes to see usage for all users.

No

I thought things might have been screwed up as I was on the Fast Insider Build but the issue basically started with the official Fall Update. Or as it was with the (older) Windows 10 Mobile Insider Builds a PC Refresh IS needed between updates to let the system run smoothly, hmmm...
I guess the issue might be gone when I would do a PC Refresh or a new installation of Windows 10. As I found this "workaround" the issue is not soooo bad to me anymore than before (after I applied the other workaround to have my C: Drive SSD's Pagefile completely removed and now the general restart) I hesitate to newly install.

I will give this a try later, just found this forum thread below this thread (and I have a Killer Network Driver): https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/high-ram-usage-and-i-dont-know-why.6218/

 

[chadmk]

No

I thought things might have been screwed up as I was on the Fast Insider Build but the issue basically started with the official Fall Update. Or as it was with the (older) Windows 10 Mobile Insider Builds a PC Refresh IS needed between updates to let the system run smoothly, hmmm...
I guess the issue might be gone when I would do a PC Refresh or a new installation of Windows 10. As I found this "workaround" the issue is not soooo bad to me anymore than before (after I applied the other workaround to have my C: Drive SSD's Pagefile completely removed and now the general restart) I hesitate to newly install.

I will give this a try later, just found this forum thread below this thread (and I have a Killer Network Driver): https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/high-ram-usage-and-i-dont-know-why.6218/

Issue is, that your memory usage is not really high, more non-existent. Even from your last screenshots, the 16GB it is showing does not have enough processes running to take up that much RAM. Almost like you have "hidden" processes running. Without knowing what is taking up your RAM, it'd be hard to diagnose.

For example below is a screenshot of my own processes, also running 16GB. You'll notice I'm running at a lot of higher values between my processes, however my Memory utilization is still less than yours. I wish I could help with whether this being a Win 10 update issue, but I have not myself experienced any related issues with the Fall update. It seems more likely that something else may have been affected during the time of your update that may actually be the cause.

What security software do you use? How strict are your firewall policies?

 

[silvershadow558]

I'm having the EXACT same problem as Tonic. But what I noticed is that you mentioned you were using chrome when the RAM and disk usage seems to eventually skyrocket. It is the same thing for me, but I started off with Firefox when the slow down began to occure. I thought it was just firefox so I switched to chrome, which worked fine fora bit, but then it returned. I then increased my RAM from 8 gigs to 16 gigs (I needed the upgrade anyways) And that worked fine for a bit too, but if anything it just prolonged the amount of time I had before everything slowed down. This was an issue for me before I upgraded from windows 8.1. I had a computer before with windows 7 and I never had this issue (I bought an entirely new tower because my work required a higher performance pc.) S I think there is a glitch somewhere in windows 8.1 that carried over to windows 10, the only difference is the program that is now showing as the main consumption in the task manager which in windows 10 (for me at least) is the system and memory compression.

 

[Shazbot]

You are experiencing a memory leak. That is why you do not see your total ram = total used.
Probably a network card driver, as these seem to keep breaking with windows 10 updates ( for 4 machines I use that is)....

 

[Shazbot]

Also. this new memory compression plays havoc for memory intensive applicattions... I regularly have 8-12GB memory in use by Photoshop, Lightroom and Kolor auto pano giga, they all play nice with eachother.... now this new memory compression wants to "compress and keep" a copy of files I have open and am working on, so in essence it tries to keep 2 copies, one that the OS thinks I want to revisit and the copy in active memory in the application.....
Seeing 6.8GB or memory allocated to "system and compressed memory" while editing 3GB TIFF files just brings my PC to its knees.... never had this issue before this new shit patch.

 

[Shazbot]

Issue is, that your memory usage is not really high, more non-existent. Even from your last screenshots, the 16GB it is showing does not have enough processes running to take up that much RAM. Almost like you have "hidden" processes running. Without knowing what is taking up your RAM, it'd be hard to diagnose.

For example below is a screenshot of my own processes, also running 16GB. You'll notice I'm running at a lot of higher values between my processes, however my Memory utilization is still less than yours. I wish I could help with whether this being a Win 10 update issue, but I have not myself experienced any related issues with the Fall update. It seems more likely that something else may have been affected during the time of your update that may actually be the cause.

What security software do you use? How strict are your firewall policies?

This is just a classic sign of a memory leak. More ram being used than device manager shows in active use. The slow creep of available memory being consumed, even when the pc is idle.....

You can find the problem driver (but it is common for network drivers to have issues).

How to fix high memory usage in Windows 10

Step-1: Download and install the Windows Driver kit (google this)

Step-2: Go to Start menu from the Windows key and open Command Prompt. Right-click on the resulting icon and select Run as Administrator from the drop-down menu

Step-3: Type cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Toolsx\64 and press Enter to go to the directory in the command prompt where WDK was installed

Step-4: Type poolmon.exe then press Enter.
When the utility opens up, press P to sort via pooltype then
press B to sort it according to number of bytes

Step-5: Note down the pooltag of the item which is using a majority of the memory. Open another command prompt to check which driver the tag belongs to. For this type findstr /s then the tag which you have noted
findstr /s TAGNAME
This searches for system applications and executables with that name

Step-6: The command will point to a specific sys file. Open the file properties for that file and check which driver the file belongs to. When you find out the driver get a driver update, or if you have the latest, reinstall it. Making sure it is a Windows 10 version of course, or at least a Win8/8.1 if no 10 are currently available.

Note if your computer has a Killer Network Gigabit ethernet card, the drivers for that card break in windows 10 a lot, and especially after major updates.

 

[DPK~GreenGoblin~DPK]

Mine stays consistently around 105. I don't consider that to be an excessive amount of memory considering what opening a typical browser window uses.

View attachment 1590

I thought it was annoying but I didn't realize 252MB was a big deal. Can someone maybe assist me? I don't even know where to start. I went to services and I think it's super fetch, not positive though.

And that's on my (best) laptop(Windows 10). The one I even came here for is worse.Here is a snip of the one I'm on right now.​

The one I need fixed, the really slow one. Is at 94% physical memory and it's svchost. I right clicked on it and went to services (I forgot to say this is Windows 7 but I'm in the process of going to win 10 it's at 99% has been for like 30 minutes haha.) and these are the programs are contributing to the svchost; Application Information, Background Intelligent Transfer Service,(<--- What is that it sounds sketchy to me) Computer Browser, Extensible Authentication Protocol, Group Policy Agent, IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Module, IP Helper, Server, User Profile Service, Task Scheduler, System Event Notification Service, Themes and Windows Management Instrumentation. Then the CPU is at 45% (Task Manager, Services, Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant and Control Panel) and the programs that contribute to the high CPU Usage is Percentage of the processor is idle(89CPU), Modem Setup Host(27CPU), Task Manager(02CPU) Can someone help please and thank you ~DPK~