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Why Windows Task manager shows total memory usage higher than the aggregate of memory usage of all the processes?

My system has 4GB physical memory. Now it is always around 65% full even if I didn't run any app. When running Edge browser with only few tabs open it easily reach to 87% and PC become slow to load any other light app.

This happened only after I upgraded WSL -1 To WSL -2 which enabled virtual machine platform and system begin to behave strangely including unexplained and unindexed memory usage, slow down .etc. I uninstalled "Kali", reverted to WSL -1, disabled Virtual Machine Platform, but the problem still prevailed. I know this will be solved if I reset Windows, but I don't want to because I will have to reinstall all the updates and apps including codec packs again (I only reset my PC just less than two months ago.).

It was a foolish thing to install "Kali" On low-memory machine but I thought WSL is lighter on resources than "Virtual Box" or "VMware". It should be noted that problem began to appear only after WSL-2 upgrade, WSL-1 didn't cause any problem at all. Before that, usually at start memory usage was at 47%. Even if I open 10 tabs at Edge it usually stands at average of 67% RAM usage and other apps usually open without initial freezing.

Now it start almost at 67% and after opening Edge browser reach 88%-90% and other apps slow to open. Do you know a way to solve this problem without a RESET. Or a way to reset without losing all updates and apps( I mean custom reset keeping apps I want -- Yeah, I know it's un-realistic in concept of RESET!, However I am desperate for a solution that doesn't involve lot of reworks). Thanks for taking time to read through this.

Extra notice: Resource monitor aggregate is correct. It shows additional physical memory usage for separate threads of same processes. For example Microsoft Edge browser shows around 750MB RAM usage in Resource Monitor while in Task Manager it only shows 250 MB of usage. Same for "Bitdefender" around 300MB on Resource Monitor while Task manager indicated 140 or so for all related processes of Bitdefender Antivirus combined. I cannot understand the reason for this odd behaviour of task manager and it only began to happen after upgrade to WSL-2 though downgrading and disabling still didn't solve the problem.This is the RamMap screenshot

System info:

Windows 10 x64 21H2

Intel core i3 4th gen 4005u

4GB physical RAM

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    Because not all memory usage is by processes. But that's not your actual question so I suggest you change the intro and the title.
    – Daniel B
    Jul 22, 2022 at 10:42
  • @Daniel B Thanks for the info. But There wasn't that much difference before WSL-2 install. And I can make sense of memory usage looking at Task Manager individual process usage even though they probably didn't sum up exactly. But now I can't, because difference is huge relatively. Problems began to arise only after WSL-2 as mentioned in the question. I extended title as your suggestion. Jul 22, 2022 at 11:08
  • Is mapped file too large? It is occupying 25% of ram. Jul 22, 2022 at 11:32
  • There is no such thing as a “custom reset”.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 22, 2022 at 12:08

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