Task Manager Not Showing All Processes Using RAM

Robert Moir wrote:

> swoozie wrote:

> > Hi, all.
> >
> > Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
> > and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
> > It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
> > and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
> > and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
> > over a GIG of RAM is in use.

>
> How are you determining this? Are you sure you're not looking at the
> pagefile instead?

Thanks for the response, Robert. I'm looking at the default "Mem
Usage"
column under the "Processes" tab in Task Manager. I've selected the
checkbox to show processes from all users.

Thanks,
~swooz

swoozie wrote:

> Robert Moir wrote:

>> swoozie wrote:

>>> Hi, all.
>>>
>>> Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
>>> and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
>>> It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
>>> and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
>>> and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
>>> over a GIG of RAM is in use.

>>
>> How are you determining this? Are you sure you're not looking at the
>> pagefile instead?

>
> Thanks for the response, Robert. I'm looking at the default "Mem
> Usage"
> column under the "Processes" tab in Task Manager. I've selected the
> checkbox to show processes from all users.

So where are you getting 1GB of ram used by a process you can't see from
there?

Robert Moir wrote:

> swoozie wrote:

> > Robert Moir wrote:

> >> swoozie wrote:
> >>> Hi, all.
> >>>
> >>> Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
> >>> and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
> >>> It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
> >>> and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
> >>> and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
> >>> over a GIG of RAM is in use.
> >>
> >> How are you determining this? Are you sure you're not looking at the
> >> pagefile instead?

> >
> > Thanks for the response, Robert. I'm looking at the default "Mem
> > Usage"
> > column under the "Processes" tab in Task Manager. I've selected the
> > checkbox to show processes from all users.

>
> So where are you getting 1GB of ram used by a process you can't see from
> there?

That's my question! :-) No single process is over 22MB in RAM usage,
and eyeballing the list has me roughly calculating a total of 200MB.

~swooz

"swoozie" <swooziep@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1157914112.071319.118870@m73g2000cwd.googlegr oups.com...

> Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
> and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
> It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
> and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
> and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
> over a GIG of RAM is in use. The process list's mem usages
> don't add up to anywhere near the 1.2GB that's in use then,
> and it was something like 400MB before starting the game
> (which uses about 700MB itself). I certainly don't see a
> process with anything that size either!

So you're saying that when you play some games, your system becomes unresponsive, so you quit the game and when you immediately
check the Task Manager, the RAM numbers don't add up right? I take it that you're saying that the total RAM used by the processes
plus the free RAM does not add up to the total RAM you've got, is that it?

When this happens and you check the TM, is the CPU usage at 100%?

What might be happening is that the game is using all that RAM-it's not uncommon at all with today's games, besides,
400MB+700MB=1.1GB like you said. The reason that you're not seeing any processes listed as using it is because the process was
already removed from the Task Manager after you quit the game, but the process of freeing up that RAM has not completed yet. That's
a lot of RAM, and a lot of it is probably in the swap file on disk (which is slow). I'm sure that if you wait a little bit (give it
a few seconds, or a minute), the amount of used RAM would drop once the system is done deallocating the memory it had assigned to
the game.


Let me know if that's not the case.


--
Alec S.
news/alec->synetech/cjb/net

Alec S. wrote:

> "swoozie" <swooziep@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1157914112.071319.118870@m73g2000cwd.googlegr oups.com...

> > Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
> > and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
> > It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
> > and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
> > and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
> > over a GIG of RAM is in use. The process list's mem usages
> > don't add up to anywhere near the 1.2GB that's in use then,
> > and it was something like 400MB before starting the game
> > (which uses about 700MB itself). I certainly don't see a
> > process with anything that size either!

>
> So you're saying that when you play some games, your system becomes unresponsive, so you quit the game and when you immediately
> check the Task Manager, the RAM numbers don't add up right? I take it that you're saying that the total RAM used by the processes
> plus the free RAM does not add up to the total RAM you've got, is that it?
>
> When this happens and you check the TM, is the CPU usage at 100%?
>
> What might be happening is that the game is using all that RAM-it's not uncommon at all with today's games, besides,
> 400MB+700MB=1.1GB like you said. The reason that you're not seeing any processes listed as using it is because the process was
> already removed from the Task Manager after you quit the game, but the process of freeing up that RAM has not completed yet. That's
> a lot of RAM, and a lot of it is probably in the swap file on disk (which is slow). I'm sure that if you wait a little bit (give it
> a few seconds, or a minute), the amount of used RAM would drop once the system is done deallocating the memory it had assigned to
> the game.
>
>
> Let me know if that's not the case.
>
>
> --
> Alec S.
> news/alec->synetech/cjb/net

Hi, Alec, thanks for the feedback. No, it's been over 7 hours now and
no RAM
usage has shrunk. But it *does* seem to be about the size of what it
might've
been during the game. Too bad I can't task switch out of the game to
peek
at the usage. Can a driver or something below the system's application
level take ownership
of an ordinary process through some glitch, then losing its PID and
entry in
the Task Manager? Or maybe the system drops the PID w/o freeing the
memory?
Not all that familiar with WinXP (Pro, SP2) system goings-on. But I've
been using
Task Manager for many years and don't think I've seen anything like
this before.
Thanks for the help!

~swooz

Alec S. wrote:

> "swoozie" <swooziep@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1157914112.071319.118870@m73g2000cwd.googlegr oups.com...

> > Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
> > and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
> > It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
> > and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
> > and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
> > over a GIG of RAM is in use. The process list's mem usages
> > don't add up to anywhere near the 1.2GB that's in use then,
> > and it was something like 400MB before starting the game
> > (which uses about 700MB itself). I certainly don't see a
> > process with anything that size either!

>
> So you're saying that when you play some games, your system becomes unresponsive, so you quit the game and when you immediately
> check the Task Manager, the RAM numbers don't add up right? I take it that you're saying that the total RAM used by the processes
> plus the free RAM does not add up to the total RAM you've got, is that it?
>
> When this happens and you check the TM, is the CPU usage at 100%?
>
> What might be happening is that the game is using all that RAM-it's not uncommon at all with today's games, besides,
> 400MB+700MB=1.1GB like you said. The reason that you're not seeing any processes listed as using it is because the process was
> already removed from the Task Manager after you quit the game, but the process of freeing up that RAM has not completed yet. That's
> a lot of RAM, and a lot of it is probably in the swap file on disk (which is slow). I'm sure that if you wait a little bit (give it
> a few seconds, or a minute), the amount of used RAM would drop once the system is done deallocating the memory it had assigned to
> the game.
>
>
> Let me know if that's not the case.
>
>
> --
> Alec S.
> news/alec->synetech/cjb/net

Oh, also...I was saying the the itemized RAM usage of each process
don't
add up to what's in the 'PF Usage' meter in the 'Performance' panel of
TM.
The missing piece is probably the size of what BF2.exe owned when the
game started freezing up (not totally, but stuttering very slowly).

Thanks,
~swooz

"swoozie" <swooziep@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1157946989.872032.146090@p79g2000cwp.googlegr oups.com...

> Oh, also...I was saying the the itemized RAM usage of each process don't
> add up to what's in the 'PF Usage' meter in the 'Performance' panel of TM.
> The missing piece is probably the size of what BF2.exe owned when the
> game started freezing up (not totally, but stuttering very slowly).

Select View->Select Columns, then check Virtual Memory Size. Take a look under that column and see if there's anything really big.


--
Alec S.
news/alec->synetech/cjb/net

"swoozie" <swooziep@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1157914112.071319.118870@m73g2000cwd.googlegr oups.com...

> Hi, all.
>
> Something on my box is suddenly taking up a lot of RAM,
> and I can't seem to track it down using task manager.
> It happens when I'm playing a game (Battlefield 2 v1.4, FWIW),
> and when I'm in the middle of the game, it starts freezing up
> and I manage to exit. The BF2.exe process is gone, but
> over a GIG of RAM is in use. The process list's mem usages
> don't add up to anywhere near the 1.2GB that's in use then,
> and it was something like 400MB before starting the game
> (which uses about 700MB itself). I certainly don't see a
> process with anything that size either!
>
> FWIW, I also used Process Explorer, but didn't see anything
> there either.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
> ~swooz
>