I have an old PC, running Win 7 64 bit with 4GB of installed RAM.

When I look at the system information it shows “available memory” as between 1 to 1.5GB.

Why is this?

I have tried google but most suggest that the problem is a 32 bit OS which is not the case with my PC.

It’s because it is being used

It’s because it is being used

Thanks for that.

At first it didn’t make sense as the Task Manager showed no apps running.

Turned out it was the process “svchost.exe” using it. Googled it and now have some memory back.

Still not all, 2.5GB of 4GB but a big improvement from <1GB!

On Linux, the OS will use any available memory as buffers and caches, to make disk access faster. So it’s not unusual to have almost no free memory.

After all, if it’s not being used, then you’ve wasted your money.

At first it didn’t make sense as the Task Manager showed no apps running.

Where do you think Windows is running? Look at processes, not apps.

Turned out it was the process “svchost.exe” using it. Googled it and now have some memory back.

Svchost is a “wrapper” service. It runs other processes inside it. Without looking inside it, what that could be is anyone’s guess, so you need to be careful blindly terminating it in case it’s something important.

On Linux, the OS will use any available memory as buffers and caches, to make disk access faster. So it’s not unusual to have almost no free memory.

After all, if it’s not being used, then you’ve wasted your money.

Precisely. Windows does the same, it’ll use free memory for caching and other optimisation tricks; if that RAM is later required by programs them it’ll dump the cache to make space. This is by design and it’s a good thing, unless there’s an actual problem the best thing you can do is to to leave it alone and stop worrying about it.

That said, if a single svchost process was tying up 1.5Gb, I’d be investigating further.

Another thing worth considering is leaks- Firefox seems to be back to its old memory-leaky self, this is an i7 with 8gb of ram in it but every so often it gets brought to its knees by a web browser 😆

Svchost is a “wrapper” service. It runs other processes inside it. Without looking inside it, what that could be is anyone’s guess, so you need to be careful blindly terminating it in case it’s something important.

Googled it and it’s a common problem Followed the help to shut it down. It’s like a new machine now.

Where do you think Windows is running? Look at processes, not apps.

No need to be rude.

SvcHost runs many different services. You’ll probably want to figure out which one it is running before shutting it down!

In my experience the SvcHost eating memory is usually the one running the Windows Update service as it downloads and installs stuff in the background. (Which makes sense on a new PC).

All kinds of things can be taking up memory. A lot will be background processes in the OS.

Also you may find some memory is mapped for hardware, such as graphics card. Depends on the graphics card and how much it has of it’s own and how much it shares with main memory, if any. Shared or not it gets mapped into the addressable space anyway, although not such an issue on 64bit systems (it is on 32bit where the maximum addressable space is 4GB).

gobuchul – Member 
Googled it and it’s a common problem Followed the help to shut it down. It’s like a new machine now.

svchost is an essential process. Shutting it down will break a lot of things, though I’d expect it will start up again anyway.

Note, modern Windows (and Linux) may show a lot of memory consumed but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s out of memory. The OS and some processes will preallocate memory and allow apps to consume bits of that for certain resources as they see fit, but overall system memory isn’t being increasingly consumed.

No need to be rude.

Huh?

The point was simply that Windows is an application in itself, it will use a good deal of RAM and won’t show up as an application in Task Manager.

svchost is an essential process. Shutting it down will break a lot of things,

Not necessarily, but it might. If you task-kill an svchost instance you’re going to get, literally, “unexpected” results by nature of what svchost is and what it’s actually running. We’d need to drill into it to find out, that’s the only way you’re going to fix the issue properly.

though I’d expect it will start up again anyway.

Quite possibly. Again, it depends what’s running it.

Googled it and it’s a common problem Followed the help to shut it down. It’s like a new machine now.

It’s a common problem is so far as “sometimes programs consume excessive memory,” as someone else said earlier it could be a memory leak or a whole host of other causes. There’s nothing inherently wrong or broken with svchost, it’s like blaming roads for a car fire.

TBH though, if you’re going to ask for advice and then ignore it completely in favour of Google, we’re both wasting our time here.

For reference: my set-up is similar (W10 rather than 7). Task Manager shows 3.2Gb out of 4Gb used. Just rebooted and without loading anything else there’s 2.3Gb consumed.

Get Process Explorer if you want to see more details of what is running. It will show you what is actually running inside svchost.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx