Why is my computer using so much memory?

Question

I don't have this problem daily, but everytime I do it gets on my nerves. I have two computers, one in the attic which I use all the time, and one in the basement which I am unlucky enough to have to use from time to time. Every thing that is opened, be it a game, Firefox, or something as simple as Wordpad, it will take tons of memory for awhile and the fan in the back of my computer starts blowing at 100000 miles per hour. Right now even, when nothing is taking alot of memory (according to task manager) the fan is really loud and fast. Makes it hard to sleep or even concentrate. Anybody know a solution to help my computer run faster, keep from freezing, and get that stupid fan to shut its mouth?

While I was doing some googling I found that the problem may be related to cisvc.exe, which when run in my (and many other's) task manager, it takes close to 90% of the usage and almost half of the RAM.

Answer 1

Do you happen to have AMD:s processor with "cool and quiet" mode enabled? For me atleast that did just the opposite to what it was supposed to do. Speeding the fan up and down making the noise very annoying. Another option if this isnt your problem, is simply to buy new and better cooling system for your computer. Those dosent cost too much but take bit of experience to install.

Reason for the slow downs is hard to tell with out knowing more from your computer. Could be some program that is running on background, mayby a virus/worm or just that your computer dosent have enough memory and is swapping hard-drive.

EDIT: cisvc.exe is an windows process that monitors the memory usage in cidaemon.exe and prevent low memory problems. So seams that your problem indeed is that you dont have enough memory and that is causing most of your problems. how much memory does your computer have? For running Win XP (which i suppose you have?) smoothly you would need around 1Gb of memory, 512Mb is sometimes enough but it can get pretty low if you have several programs open at same time.

Answer 2

Task Manager is poor... and don't show what are the programs behind the DLL.

Try Process Explorer a great small software (free since bought by Microsoft and still free), it will show you programs running with names and location and Memory used (including swap and dependencies)

Off course there is always the virus possibility, if you have programs running from c:\windows with random name like XYFEYXXY etc, there it is...
Why not testing Avast ? it s free for home use and work a lot better than Norton or Mc Afee (especially in term of memory).

And for the fan, well depending of your motherboard there is FanMaster for instance, nice little soft to show speed and monitor temp.
If it is just that your computer is too hot, invest in a better Fan for CPU and Graphic card... zalmann is not bad.

Answer 3

Sounds like you have a fan problem not a memory problem. One of the things that the task manager shows you it the amount of memory allocated to each task. That would tell you if there was a memory problem.

I suspect that the fan is blocked by dust or something and the motherboard is telling it to try harder to get air into the computer box or the CPU heat sink. Take a vacuum cleaner to the fan.

Answer 4

If you are using windows XP, go to the task manager, processes, then view --> select columns, select memory usage and thread count, look at the processes and sort them according to memory usage. Search for the process name on the web, it may be a spam or a virus, try removing suspicious processes to start automatically. check the registry. See the windows services that starts automatically, use run --> services.msc, sort by start type, and see all automatic ones, or with status 'started', disable all ones you done want to start, you can use an application 'TuneUp' utilities, its good for such issues.

Answer 5

Memory will have to now not be stressed with CPU. Memory is handiest used whilst wanted, it is simply quick time period reminiscence for the application. If it demands long term reminiscence, it writes to the difficult force. Readyboost will handiest be priceless if you happen to run many apps at a time.

Answer 6

While I dont know what it could be you could ask at www.hardwareanalysis.com and they could answer you better then I could...