Suppose I run some code which I know may contain a lot of defects. Those may be memory leaks or just bugs causing very high memory consumption. So let's say that today 8 gigabytes RAM is usual amount and that code gets crazy and consumes 8 gigabytes, then another 8 gigabytes forcing excessive page file operations, then 8 more gigabytes until the whole system just stalls. I tried that - Windows gets mostly unresponsive and useless in such case, the best bet is just powering the machine down and up.  Is there any way to protect the system from such cases? Perhaps some programmatic limits of how much memory the process is allowed to use?
3051
Is there any way to set a system wide memory limit a process can use in Windows XP? I have a couple of unstable apps which do work ok for most of the time but can hit a bug which results in eating whole memory in a matter of seconds (or at least I suppose that's it). This results in a hard reset as Windows becomes totally unresponsive and I lose my work.  I would like to be able to do something like the /etc/limits on Linux - setting M90, for instance (to set 90% max memory for a single user to allocate). So the system gets the remaining 10% no matter what.
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I have a similar issue as . You can pretty much take his screen shot and apply it to my issue: Windows 8.1, 99% disk usage or in that vicinity for a longer period of time (minutes). Yet the individual disk usage stats don't add up to more than roughly 1MB/Sec. I have an SSD disk capable of much higher throughput.  The question I linked to doesn't provide much answer, but one comment hints to low free disk space. That is an issue with my disk. I have only ~1GB left of free space on my C drive. But my follow-up question is why would that matter? Windows does pre-allocate 6GB of virtual drive, doesn't it? At least that's how I interpret "currently allocated" in the Virtual Memory settings screen under System Properties &rarr; Performance options.  I've tried to use the  to gain some information on what's using the disk, but the amount of data logged in just a couple of seconds is so vast that I don't know where to start. The only thing I see is that service.exe accesses the registry a lot... But I guess that's normal? If anyone care to take a look, the log dump is  (19MB)  To summarize:   Does the disk usage really go up when free space declines? If so, why? Can anyone deduct from my Procmon log file what program or process causes 99% disk usage?   edit: To comment on the "malware"-answer in the other post: I'd like to know, not guess. I doubt it is malware in my case, but if it is, my logs should show that.  update: Similar case just happened. Any clues from these two ResMon screenshots?      "System" doesn't really tell me much.
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Don't know if this is the right place to ask this question.  I've been reading that 32bit OSs (like the Ubuntu i'm running right now) can't adress more than 3.2gb or 3.3gb of RAM memory.  I remember for my old Computer Architecture course that the memory limitation was 2^32 "pointers" (don't remember the right word). I mean, the memory was represented like an array where the CPU can acces it directly, but up to its limit. If the CPU is 32 bit, then it can address 2^32 words, if it's 64 bits 2^64, etc.  So, if what i said before is right, then, my OS should be able to address 2^32 = 4294967296 = 4Gb.  I'm thinking maybe some sort of space is reserved to the particular use of the Kernel, cache, buffering or swapping. But don't have the correct answer.  Can you give me a hint?
73483
My processor is using a big part of my RAM memory as cache and I want to clean it up because of that; will it prejudice something?
21696
I am using a linux server which has 128GB of memory and 24 cores. I use top to see how much it is used. Its output is pasted at the end of the post. Here are two questions:  (1) I see that each of the running processes occupies a very small percentage of memory (%MEM no more than 0.2%, and most just 0.0%), but how the total memory is almost used as in the fourth line of output ("Mem:  130766620k total, 130161072k used,   605548k free,   919300k buffers")? The sum of used percentage of memory over all processes seems unlikely to achieve almost 100%, doesn't it?  (2) how to understand the load average on the first line ("load average: 14.04, 14.02, 14.00")?   Thanks and regards!  Edit:  Thanks!  I also really like to hear some rough numbers based on used percentage of memory to determine if a server is heavily loaded, since I once became the one who cramed the server without understanding the current load.  Is swap regarded as almost the same as memory? For example, when memory and swap are almost of same size, if the memory is almost running out but the swap is still largely free, may I just view it as if the used percentage of memory + swap is still not high and run other new processes?  How would you consider together CPU or memory (or memory + swap) usage? Do you become worried if either of them reaches too high or both?  Output of top：  $ top    top - 12:45:33 up 19 days, 23:11, 18 users,  load average: 14.04, 14.02, 14.00 Tasks: 484 total,  12 running, 472 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie Cpu(s): 36.7%us, 19.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 43.6%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st Mem:  130766620k total, 130161072k used,   605548k free,   919300k buffers Swap: 63111312k total,   500556k used, 62610756k free, 124437752k cached    PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND  6529 sanchez   18  -2 1075m 219m  13m S  100  0.2  13760:23 MATLAB 13210 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1216 R  100  0.0   3:56.75 absurdity 13888 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1204 R  100  0.0   2:04.89 absurdity 14542 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1196 R  100  0.0   1:08.34 absurdity 14544 timothy   18  -2  2888 2076  400 R  100  0.0   1:06.14 gatherData  6183 sanchez   18  -2 1133m 195m  13m S  100  0.2  13676:04 MATLAB  6795 sanchez   18  -2 1079m 210m  13m S  100  0.2  13734:26 MATLAB 10178 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1204 R  100  0.0  11:33.93 absurdity  12438 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1216 R  100  0.0   5:38.17 absurdity 13661 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1216 R  100  0.0   2:44.13 absurdity 14098 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1204 R  100  0.0   1:58.31 absurdity 14335 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1196 R  100  0.0   1:08.93 absurdity 14765 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1196 R   99  0.0   0:32.57 absurdity 13445 timothy   18  -2 48336  37m 1216 R   99  0.0   3:01.37 absurdity 28990 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    2  0.0  65:50.21 pdflush 12141 tim       18  -2 19380 1660 1024 R    1  0.0   0:04.04 top  1240 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0  16:07.11 kjournald  9019 root      20   0  296m 4460 2616 S    0  0.0  82:19.51 kdm_greet     1 root      20   0  4028  728  592 S    0  0.0   0:03.11 init     2 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd     3 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:01.01 migration/0     4 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:08.13 ksoftirqd/0     5 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/0     6 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0  17:27.31 migration/1     7 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:01.21 ksoftirqd/1     8 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/1     9 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0  10:02.56 migration/2    10 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.34 ksoftirqd/2    11 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/2    12 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   4:29.53 migration/3    13 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.34 ksoftirqd/3
71755
I have 8GB of memory on a 64 bit windows 8.1 machine, and windows is telling me I'm using 91% of my memory, yet its simultaneously telling me I'm only using 3GB.  I literally just restarted my machine a few minutes ago because it was being incredibly rediculously slow. I'm currently only running chrome (with a ton of tabs, but doesn't add up to anywhere near 7.5GB). What could be going on here?   Here's a bunch of my current info       I took a look at this:  but I wasn's able to use xperf and the rest didn't lead me to a solution.  UPDATE - RamMap:   UPDATE 2: I checked Resource Monitor at Wouter's suggestion and found an "Image" called lxdecoms.exe with over 6GB of Commt (KB). I tried killing the process, but while it lowered my Commit Charge, it didn't affect "Used Physical Memory". So I restarted hoping to capture it again in full, but its not back yet and yet the problem persists.  I should note that I do have a Centos virtual box virtual machine running on my machine, not sure if that has any weird memory impacts that aren't reflected in the numbers in these tools.   I got xperf working, so here's my resource monitor and a wpa analysis of my xperf output (from xperf -on ReferenceSet -BufferSize 1024 -MaxFile 512 -FileMode Circular  &amp;&amp; timeout 5 &amp;&amp; xperf -d MemUsage.etl):     What is N/A that's taking up 2.7GB of memory? My VM?
45242
Some times my laptop gets stuck due to excessive usage of RAM when I open bulky applications. So if it does not respond I shut down the laptop using the power button. Does this damage Ubuntu in any way? Can it give rise to security problems or vulnerabilities?
7277
I am using an old laptop and doing heavy processing that needs high CPU usage for a long time (~30mins - 2hours). When the process puts heavy load on CPU for a long time, CPU overheats and computer shuts down. I don't want to use a cooler/stand because I am carrying this laptop around and working outside home.  Is there a way/application that I can limit CPU usage of a process in Windows?  Note: Setting the priority of the process from task manager does not work.  Note 2: Fans are clean.
80217
I am using Windows 7 64 bit with 8G ram. After some use, I feel Windows is getting sluggish. The drive is thrashing. When I look at the resource monitor and disk activity, I see a few instances of use of the page file (c:\pagefile.sys). I check the physical memory and I see about 2.3G available memory and 700M free memroy.   Why doesn't Windows use more of the free memory and less of the page file? Does it need to leave some x amount of free ram, how much would that be? Is it a percentage of physical ram?  My plan is get more ram and an SSD for the main drive. Meanwhile I am suffering from slow performance.
8656
I have noticed that from some time my system is freezing and its probably caused by the high CPU usage which is caused by the system process.  All applications I'm running is the Skype, TeamSpeak and Chrome so it definitely shouldnt eat that amount of CPU.  You can see the problem itself and running processes in the screenshot below:    Sometimes CPU usage is reaching 90%, but the average usage is like 40-65%.  My PC parameters:   Windows 8 (customer preview) Intel Core i3 - 2350M 8 GB RAM   I'd appreciate any help attempt! Regards.  --UPDATE--  As the user below posted a great answer, I have noticed that the process that is eating the most CPU in the system is called Arthurx.sys, simple google tells that it's a TPLink driver (an wifi adapter, I have bought like 2 weeks ago!) drivers has been installed from the Windows MSDN, but also tried to install the drivers from the attached CD, but it doesn't help. From the system start, it is using like 5% of the CPU only, but after 2-4 hours of working it is growing up and reaching 40-60% of the CPU usage.  Device name: TPLink WN722N
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SUID   The sticky bit applied to executable programs flagging the system to keep an image of the program in memory after the program finished running.  But I don't know that what it's stored in memory. And how I can see them, in this case.?
87253
If I use a processor at 100% constantly for several hours, can that damage the machine?
21798
I know that RAM disks are fast, faster than any disk, but they lose their contents on a shutdown of the operating system. The capacity is limited to the RAM. Is there a useful implementation on a new 64-bit Windows 2008 server?
122788
I found a similar question but still it doesn't answer my questions     First off, considering user processes don't have access to this part and I guess if they try to access it, it would lead to an error, then why even include this part in the user process virtual space?  Can you guys give me a real life scenario of this part being essential and useful?  Also, one more question is I always thought the kernel part of memory is dynamic, meaning it might grow for example when we use dynamic libraries in our programs, so is it true? If so, then how can the OS determine how big the size of kernel is in the virtual space of our processes? And when our kernel in physical memory grows or changes, does the same effect happens in the kernel part of virtual memory for all the processes? Is the mapping of this virtual kernel to real kernel a one to one mapping?
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The new Task Manager has a great UI in windows 8, however, there are some discrepancies in the data I can not account for:  Machine: 8 GB of total ram. (This is a physical machine, not a virtual)  The processes tab shows 45% of Memory utilized.  The listed process do not add up to 3.5 GB of RAM, but instead add up to 0.948 GB. There is no "processes for all users" option.   The performance Tab Shows:   In use : 3.6 GB Available: 4.4 GB Committed : 4.1 /9.2 GB  Cached: 3.7 GB Paged Pool: 376 MB Non-paged pool: 135 MB  My reading of this says I have ALOT of "cloaked" processes running some where eating my ram.  How do I interpret this data and how do I verify it?
121879
I need to externally limit a process/session to a certain number of cores.  Are there any other possibilities than CPU affinity (I don't like the need to specify the actual cores) and cgroups (hard to integrate into our project)?
77901
I keep getting this annoying low memory warning/prompt to close games I play. It happens very often and I still have ~6 gigs of ram free. I disabled virtual memory because it was putting stuff on the pagefile when I had 10 gigs free ram so that spiked my disk usage.  Is there any way to disable this warning? I have 16GB ram so it shouldn't be an issue. I would prefer to keep pagefiles off because my HD is very loud so it's nice to keep it spun down as much as possible.  I don't want to disable it completely. Ideally, I would like it to go off when I have ~2GB left rather than 6, but if this isn't viable, I may just disable it completely.