90 percent memory useage with nothing open im not sure what is happening

K1LLSW1TCH1

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So basically last night i was playing Overwatch and my game crashed due to high memory useage, i was downloading while i was playing so i thought maybe it was that quit that and it seemed to help, then it happened again so i closed everything on my second monitor and all background tabs, it then happened again and i realised my memory useage was at like 80 percent while just playing one game i have 16gb ddr4 ram so this is obviously not right, i went to bed and thought ille check it out tomorrow hopefully i can find a fix it seemed normal again i had background apps open while playing the same game at it was at like 50 percent, now its the evening and its stuck at 90 i open task manager there are like no apps open at all im just on desktop and its at 89 percent i will attach a screen shot if i can im not sure what to do, i cant even open games right now it just crashes my pc why might this be happening i got this ram like 6 months ago as i build a brand new pc any ideas on how to fix this thanks in advance

Edit: I can't attach a screen shot but when i click on the memory tab nothing is there its all like 1-2 percent if i have chrome open there is a lot of usage but even if i close that it just goes down to 89 percent idk what to do :(
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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Alright thanks for the tip ille try this now im trying to find a way to upload a screen shot cause i looked in my performance tab and i literally says 14.9 out of 16gb is being used 93 percent and i have literally nothing open apart from a browser
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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I looked there nis.exe is using the most then memory compression mrt.exe then a bunch of chrome tabs i tried to end nis.exe and it said access is denied
 


start task manager.
Performance
Resource Monitor
Memory

This will show you very detailed info on what is consuming your memory.

When i say detailed i mean - it is going to tell you EXACTLY what programs are eating your RAM. Just go to resource monitor and look!
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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I have looked and there is like nothing there nis.exe mrt.exe which im pretty sure are the anti virus programs i am running then chrome and memory compression are jhust at the top 92 percent used memory
 
There is "free" ram, and there is "available" ram (standby cache etc), your ram might be 99% in use but 70% available - send a screenshot of task managers memory usage

Also have you run hardware tests to check you dont have some bad hardware/configuration?
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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what is the best site to use to take a screen shot
 

dgingeri

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Wow, compression is even in use, and the swap file is being thrashed. I'm going to ask a possibly stupid question here. Have you rebooted yet?
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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Its not stupid i have not as im running the anti virus stuff should i just reboot? Its been running for 30 mins 32 infected files
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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I rebooted and now it is a 16 percent even though its brought it down why would i do this can this just happen sometimes? I can carry on the scan as i just paused it but why would it do this nothing has been found so far in anti virus
 

dgingeri

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It could have been just a memory leak of some kind from some running program, possibly Chrome. Used memory just wasn't freed up again. This is why a reboot is almost always the first step in computer support. It solves many problems, in every OS.

That being said, I have seen some malware sit in memory and go away after a reboot. it's a way to avoid detection or prevention from Windows' UAC. It very well could have been a botnet with a temporary client app that runs in the background.

Keep an eye on things. See if it happens again, and see what was running over the previous days. That might reveal the true cause. It could possibly even just go away and never return.
 

K1LLSW1TCH1

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Thanks foir the help the anitvirus full scan is picking up nothing so with this is it likely to be a botnet? and if so anyway i can do a more specific check for this