I have a Lenovo X201s with i7 L620 @ Ghz and 4Gb Ram Windows 7 Professional 64bit is installed on it and all 4Gb is visible from task manager and all other system tools
Virtual memory is set manually for initial 4096Mb and max 8192Mb There is 22Gb free space on the one and only local disk where its configured.
When memory usage according to task manager reaches about 3.18 Gb (83%) the machine starts to swap heavily and becomes very unresponsive. Resource monitor says:
HW reserverd 205Mb In use 3262Mb Modified 6Mb Standby 606Mb Free: 17Mb
Available 627Mb Cached 623Mb Total 3891Mb Installed 4096Mb
After a clean boot I have 1.2Gb used memory according to Task Manager and 1.7Gb used after all memory hogs like skype and desktop gadgets are loaded.
I have checked through fully with nod32 virus scanner (nothing found), made sure that all the latest Updates are installed, ran memtest86+ overnight (no errors)
I know Im not really using the memory too sparingly, can get carried away with the number of browser tabs open and usually I have openoffice or some other application running as well with some other utilities, like calculator, notepad, winamp. However I just feel this is not really out of ordinary extreme usage and 4Gb seemingly insufficient to handle it surprises me.
My questions are the following:
Does the above way of operation (starting to swap around 80% of usage) seem correct, or is something wrong with my system? If something is wrong how can I trace it down? What are the most common fixes for similar situations?
If the system operates fine. Is there a way to improve the situation without changing my habits of using the machine (ie. avidly closing applications and browser tabs before I open new ones) or buying more RAM? I found http://www.koshyjohn.com/software/memclean/ to be useful. I tried to track down what windows service could I disable which I do not need and consumes memory (I disabled quite a few already)