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I'm trying to clear up memory usage on my windows 7 with 2 GB RAM

Oracle.exe never shows up in the top processes, but the Resource Monitor shows it uses 637 Mb of commit (virtual memory) v 12Mb of Private memory

So my question is - is it actually NOT hogging the RAM and I dont need to do anything about it?

p.s. i do have 2 huge java apps running at 600 Mb private each which are the guilty guys.

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2 Answers

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In essence, yes, no worries. Windows 7's "Commited Bytes" metric actually reflects the total amount of memory (physical + virtual) that Windows has assigned to the process. This includes "cached" memory which can be freed if need be.

Also, if you have two Java apps running at 600MB private each, there's not a lot of RAM usage to reduce since Windows and some other programs you probably don't want to quit need some, too. Have you considered just upgrading? Just shell out those 30 bucks and be done with it :)

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I'm trying to clear up memory usage on my windows 7 with 2 GB RAM

What do you really want to achieve? The memory not recently used is swapped out into the page file. Windows 7 virtual memory manager is very good at this and most often there is very little you will gain by trimming the processes or by killing them.

If you really want to see which process is causing page file traffic, do not watch total memory usage, watch "page faults" instead.

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i'm trying to kill unnecessary background processes, so that my java app gets more memory. are you referring to "hard faults / sec"? – JoseK Jan 24 '11 at 11:16
Yes. Unless you are getting near your commit limit, it is not important how much memory is allocated by individual processes. If you are getting near your commit limit, increase the page file size. Unless you really see page faults hapenning, just having the memory allocated does not cause any adverse effect. – Suma Jan 24 '11 at 12:03

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