How to Resolve High Memory Usage of Your Computer?

First of all, high memory usage isn’t a good thing at most times. If your computer seems very slow, then high random access memory (RAM) usage is definitely not a good thing. If your RAM is full, your computer is slow, and its hard drive light is constantly blinking, your computer is swapping to disk. This is a sign that your computer is using your hard disk, which is much slower to access, as an “overflow” for your memory.

If this is occurring, it’s a clear side that your computer needs more RAM – or that you need to use less memory-hungry programs. However, there’s a clear difference between this case, where your computer isn’t performing well, and the more common case where your computer seems to be performing just fine, but there’s an alarming amount of RAM being used with few programs open.

Disk Caching

Install Windows XP on a computer and you’ll probably see it using several hundred megabytes of memory when the system is idle. Install Windows 7 on that same computer and you’ll likely see Windows 7 using several gigabytes of memory in the same situation.

So what’s going on? Is Windows XP just a lighter, faster operating system? Are modern operating systems bloated and wasteful with memory? Not quite.

RAM is more plentiful than it was when Windows XP was the shiny new operating system, and modern operating systems take advantage of it. Modern operating systems use your computer’s RAM as a cache for frequently accessed files and program data.

In Windows, this feature is known as SuperFetch, which was introduced in Windows Vista. SuperFetch watches the applications you use and loads commonly-used application files and libraries into your computer’s RAM before you need them. When you launch an application, Windows loads the application’s files from your RAM instead of reading them from disk, which is a slow process. This speeds up application launching and generally makes your computer faster and more responsive.

Browsers and Other Software

The same applies for browsers and other software applications with their own caches. For example, if you notice a web browser like Mozilla Firefox using a large amount of RAM, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you have a lot of RAM in your computer, it’s good that Firefox is using it. By caching web pages you’ve visited in your RAM, Firefox can speed up web page load times, making using the Back and Forward buttons much faster. For this reason, Firefox automatically determines the ideal cache size based on the amount of RAM in your computer.

Firefox itself may have historically had memory leaks and other problems, but the concept is the same. It doesn’t make sense for Mozilla to get Firefox’s RAM usage down to the 50 megabytes because modern computers have a lot of RAM Firefox can use to speed up web browsing.

The same applies for other software. Programs with high memory usage may be making good use of your RAM, not wasting it.

However, when your computer doesn’t have enough RAM for all of the actions it’s trying to perform, Windows and your programs can stop working. It’s not always convenient or practical to run a limited number of programs and shut down some programs while you are working. If you want to speed up your computer without interrupting your work, a Windows optimization tool serves as a good option to you.

Install a Free Windows optimization tool to help you speed up your computer at any time. UPCleaner is a free Windows pc optimization tool that blitzes clutter and unwanted files from your computer, leaving it in tip top condition and faster than ever. It provides you smart optimization schemes and speeds up your computer very fast. You can download it from http://www.upcleaner.net/.

After you install UPCleaner, a floating window will show up on your screen to notify the real-time performance of your computer. When your computer is low on memory, double-click the percentage circle to release your memory immediately.