Does anyone think that Vista has a memory leak? For me, if I run it for a few days the amount of used memory starts rising. Even though I have 2 gb there are a few non critical windows services (such as printspooler) that I have disabled because I don't need them. I also have all of the 3rd party services (other than zone alarm, avira, and ati) not run automatically and I start the rest only when I need them. I also use WinPatrol to control what is set by default to run by way of the registry. In all I have winpatrol, rocket bar, & the side bar run at boot up in addition to the before mentioned 3rd party services/programs (and of course the critical windows services) run at boot up. Media center also has a few little programs run that I can't stop. Generally on boot up the computer is using less than 800 mb [which is still more than twice XP but thats another issue]. In addition to those when I went to bed last night I had yahoo messenger and google talk running and the computer was using almost 1000 mb. I get up this morning windows is using 1500 mb. I tried stopping all of the 3rd part stuff and, just to experiment, I starting stopping critical windows stuff and it was still using ~1.25 gb of ram when I had stopped as much as I could. The only way that I can get RAM usage back to normal is to reboot the computer. That is why I think there is a memory leak.

So my question is if there are any other Vista users that experience the same thing. I haven't run 7 enough to notice if that happens with it & I also don't have as much run because I don't have as much installed. So my second question is if the same thing happens with 7. I guess a third question would be if someone has an explanation as to why this happens.

Does anyone think that Vista has a memory leak?

No - and a quick search of Google for Vista memory leak yields nothing either. You need to reboot to your normal desktop then see how much everything is using in Task Manager. Use the computer for a couple days, close down everything so it is as if you just rebooted, and compare Task Manager. Using Process Explorer would work too, with more detail.

No, though you can use freeware such as Mz VistaForce to speed up your computer.

It is also known that if you check the recycle bin properties like in XP where you set it to 1% now in vista you just set it to how much MB you want it to take. Less MB = More Speed.

Few know this, but now D-A-L community does.

I've never heard of OS memory leak, but surely many programs, you're running in that time span, do have memory leaks.

Less MB = More Speed.

Few know this, but now D-A-L community does.

Hmmm, apparently so few people know this, I can't find any substantiating evidence to support this claim. I have never heard that before, and can't picture how a smaller recycle bin could ever affect performance, except on a disk extremely short of free space. But then a simple emptying of the Recycle Bin will take care of that - no need to resize.

To the best of my knowledge, the recycle bin has worked pretty much that same way since Windows 3.0 days. But I could be wrong so please provide links to credible sources where this is published and explained.

Originally Posted by vom53

No, though you can use freeware such as Mz VistaForce to speed up your computer.

It is also known that if you check the recycle bin properties like in XP where you set it to 1% now in vista you just set it to how much MB you want it to take. Less MB = More Speed.

Few know this, but now D-A-L community does.

I'm not saying that anything is wrong or slow with my computer. I've 2 gb of memory and I started to wonder about a memory leak when I look at memory usage and 75% of it is gone and I'm hardly running anything. Thats twice as much as it does when I first boot up. Thanks for the tip on the tools though.

I agree with Bill on the recycle bin size. The only advantage would be to force yourself to actually delete unneeded files to make sure the OS has enough space for normal use. Thats not my problem though. My vista partition is less than half full.

Broni closing off everything I was running and actually starting to stop needed processes just to experiment only dropped usage by about 250 mb.

I've been watching process explorer and the "working set" was much higher for a lot of processes than "WS private" which is what the values in task manager seemed to equal. While reported total usage seemed to match the working set. I tried to keep the computer running to see if it got up that high again but the computer was restarted yesterday. At that time it had gotten up to 1100 mb. I'll continue to keep it running and see what happens but I had had this happen more than once. Some of the highest running processes are windows processes unless I'm running FF or VMWare.

Vista uses RAM in very different way, than previous Windows version.
Basically, there no "free RAM" anymore.
Vista caches almost all available RAM, so it can be easily used, when needed.
More reading: Coding Horror: Why Does Vista Use All My Memory?

Looks like interesting reading. I'll get back to you on that when I have time to read it all. Does 7 do that? I haven't used it enough to notice.

Yes.
Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Win 7 are based on very same kernel NT 6