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Recently my computer has had an issue involving strange high RAM usage. Right after starting up, the RAM usage is kind of high (about 48-50% of 16GB) but it's still usable. After I open some apps for working, it grows to about 80-85% and at this level, it's still usable. Usually as before (about 1 month ago), it's always stable at this level even after leaving the computer run for several days (even several weeks).

But after the issue arose, it now can grow fairly quickly (about after 1-2 days left running) to 96-98% and at this level I can't use my computer normally (it's always sluggish and unresponsive). As before I set the max memory for WSL (I use Docker Desktop) at 4GB and now tried reducing it to 1GB but still the issue remains.

By looking into the Task Manager, I think it's definitely some kind of strange issue (all the visible processes' RAM usage cannot add up to such a high total RAM usage). It's even more obvious when looking at the Users tab of Task Manager, the total RAM usage for that only user is just about 3.6 GB but occupies up to 98% total RAM (of 16GB)? That's really strange.

enter image description here I've thought of a memory leak issue caused by some app/service but don't know how to track it down. But as I said before, it's already strange right after starting the computer (when the memory leak issue cannot be the case), the initial memory usage is still fairly high (48-50% of 16GB). This computer is my office computer, I have my own laptop installed with only 12 GB of RAM (using the same Windows 10 with latest updates installed) and the init RAM is just about 25-30%. Of course the startup apps/services on both systems are different.

I've used Windows 10 for years since it was released the first time but this is the first time I've encountered such a strange issue with RAM.

Can it be any issue with hardware (the physical RAM device)? Could you help me diagnose this kind of issue, currently I may have to turn off the computer at the end of the working day (as before I left it run for even several weeks without any issue).

Additional screenshots

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Hopeless
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  • Can you provide us a screenshot of RAMMap instead of Task Manager? Your screenshot doesn't tell us what processes are running. [Here](https://superuser.com/questions/949244/windows-10-high-memory-usage-unknown-reason?rq=1) is how you determine if you have a memory leak caused by a driver. – Ramhound Sep 07 '22 at 04:33
  • @Ramhound I've just added more screenshots, I think the strange issue can be seen via the Users tab in Task Manager. – Hopeless Sep 07 '22 at 04:40
  • Did you run RAMMap as an Administrator? You will have to use poolmon to provide us additional information. – Ramhound Sep 07 '22 at 05:00
  • @Ramhound maybe I run RAMMap as normal user, I don't know how to use poolmon so please give me some direction on what to do, thanks. In the meanwhile I'll try reading about it. – Hopeless Sep 09 '22 at 03:55
  • I did provide instructions – Ramhound Sep 09 '22 at 10:53
  • @Ramhound your previous comment said `You will have to use poolmon to provide us additional information` but what is the additional info here? `poolmon` is a tool with various options, each option used gives a different output. I've not even been able to install the `WDK` to use `poolmon` but I've found another GUI version of it, looks like it just shows a screen that I'm not sure what that is. – Hopeless Sep 13 '22 at 04:04
  • I provided you a link that briefly explains how to use the tool – Ramhound Sep 13 '22 at 04:22
  • @Ramhound yes I missed that link (actually I didn't think it may be helpful in my case and partly it seems complicated). If you want some screenshots like from that question, I'll try to understand the instruction there and update the question here with similar info. Thanks. – Hopeless Sep 13 '22 at 10:18

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