Computer runs out of memory even though I have 8gb in Standby RAM

Question

I have an i5 12gb RAM Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit machine and I recently had to kill several processes because it ran out of 'Free Memory'...however there was still 7.5gb in 'Standby' Memory.

I didn't have that much open (Outlook, VS2010, SQL Server) but not really running any of them. Iwas typing an email and it just stopped.

I killed VS and SQL Server and then it slowly recovered...my question is if I have nearly 8gb of Standby memory not being used why does it run out of memory and die and can I somehow adjust the amount of memory

thanks

Answer 1

1 possibility, Poorly coded programs may not release memory when it is needed by other processes, or the program has a memory leak.

Open a run box and type in resmon , then go to the memory tab, see what is using all the memory.

You can also install and run RAMMap it gives a better display than resmon and has much more information to help solve the problem.

Some insight on how to use RAMMap

Also check your pagefile size.

Answer 2

There are some prudent things you can try to see if it will help: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Ways-to-improve-your-computers-performance

But you're not running that much, so I think that Moab may be onto something where there may be some poorly coded programs.