My RAM is being retarded.

For some reason, no matter what I do on my laptop, I end up with almost constant periods of insane memory usage. Sometimes as bad as 50%, sometimes 99%. And I have no idea what's causing it. I've checked all my processes, and the largest memory usage of any program I have running at its peak is 200-250mb. Which is barely anything, considering my apparent physical memory usage is well over 1.5 GB. Is it possible that there's some process Windows can't recognize, or is my RAM just bad? Anyone who can help, I'd wholly appreciate it.

Don't worry about responding promptly. It's going to take me 10 minutes to refresh the page anyway =p

I dunno try this http://www.ehow.com/how_4473936_reset-ram-computer.html

Make a boot disk of memtest and let it scan.

A possibility is a virus.

Ran memtest, my sticks are fine. Scanned my computer and got rid of a couple trojans (i was told they were false positives) so we'll see what happens.

download more ram

buy more ram

fixed

somebody missed the joke

im too tired now

Excuses.

Okay, for now I'm just going to say it's resolved. Anski pretty much gave me a trojan and I hate him now =3

lol how did he

It may just be a laptop thing. Mine did the same thing. My 4 gigs of ram would suddenly only be 1 or 2, and there wouldn't be any thing taking that much memory. ~_~

Update: the trojan was obviously a false positive, since it didnt make a damn bit of difference.

So here's where we are:

It's not bad ram.
It's not a virus.
It's not any program I have running.
This leaves only one option, as heretical as it might be: Vista.

I don't like the thought of using Vista as a scapegoat like everyone else, but I'm really down to zero other possibilities at the moment. And if the problem really is Vista having a horrible, silly memory leak, then my only option is to format, which is really the one thing i didnt want to do, but suppose i'll have to do. The problem is, I'm not sure how to go about it. I've only heard of countless problems from people trying to downgrade from Vista to XP, and wanted to know if anyone here has done it successfully, and if so, how. Any help would be appreciated.

Downgrading is easy if you have an XP OS disk, just save all the files you want to keep externally then wipe and start fresh. But before you do I really suggest you run chkdsk then defrag as a last ditch effort if you haven't already.

I've only heard of countless problems from people trying to upgrade from Vista to XP,

fixed.

That wasn't even funny when i first heard it three years ago.

Either way, I did UPGRADE ( xD ) to XP and havent noticed any other issues. Whether it was the OS, or just that the computer needed a good wipe remains to be seen. Either way, topic resolved for now.