What is Memory Leak?
But before we proceed some might ask what is memory leak, well it may interest you to know that memory leak is a portion of the RAM that a program marks as “in use” but not necessarily been used.
This event normally occurs when a program fails to alert windows RAM manager when a RAM has stop been used in a segment. Windows not recognizing that the RAM is no longer in used will not use the RAM for further operation.
With this at hand its normally leads to higher RAM usage even when the RAM is not being used by a particular program. Such system problem can occur on the following programs: background processes, Windows services, hardware drivers, native apps, and third-party apps.
Tip: To possibly fix this problem of memory leak is to restart the PC as RAM is a volatile memory and it will definitely reset as soon as the restart is complete.
Don’t Miss to Read: How to Disable Windows 10 Automatic Maintenance Feature
Identifying Memory Leak
For most of you using windows OS, you will note that Windows Task Manager show all currently running processes alongside with their resources usage. The Task is used to find out processes on the windows OS. To be able to identify memory leak follow the below procedures.
Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager and proceed to the Processes tab. In there you will see all the active processes with their CPU and memory usage details.
To be able arrange the processes in descending order with highest memory usage process on the top, click on the top of the Memory tab (where usage percentage is written).
In here you have to figure out all the processes that is using more RAM size more than expected (Memory using unusual RAM). Probably most culprit will be using not less than 50% of the total RAM.
Always bear it in mind that heavy programs like Adobe Premiere or even your browser to be precise might be using multiple GBs of RAM.
Below is some measure to take after finding the culprit using more RAM
>> If you notice that it is third-party app, reinstall or reset it (if possible). Otherwise, you’ll have to get rid of it and may have to find an alternative.
>> If possibly it is not a third-party app, then right-click on it and select “Search online “. The internet should give some necessary information on what it does. But if it is a Windows process, then search further to see if you could find a solution to prevent memory leak in it, or check the next step below.
>> Most of the possible solutions I will be dropping here is based on how to fix problems with native Windows apps and services that may be causing the memory leak. If you are still facing same issues after carrying out the processes given earlier proceed with the below solutions.
How to Fix Faulty Drivers
You may face some issues like drivers not working properly after upgrading to windows 10 creators on your PC. To possibly fix this, you have to update every outdated driver which you can do manually or automatically which I will be showing you below.
How to Manually update PC drivers
To update your drivers manually just follow the below procedure and get that done without much stress.
Press Windows + R and enter devmgmt.ms in the Run dialog to open the Device Manager. Expand the contents and look for a driver with a yellow triangle icon next to it.
Note: The icon indicates that the driver is outdated or faulty. In case you find any, just right-click on it and select Update driver software.
After that a wizard will open up, here click on Search automatically for updated driver software to update the driver.
How to Automatically update drivers On Computers
I mostly recommend you to use a third-party driver update tool as they find fault that windows may skip on the process. The choice I made while carrying out this tutorial is IObit Driver Booster. This is supported for over 400,000 types of drivers with a special focus on Windows 10 drivers.
To use the app just install the app and after successful installation just launch the app and it will automatically search and list all the faulty and outdated drivers. You may want to update them, simply press the “Update all” button to update them.
Clean Boot Windows 10
You can follow this article on how to clean boot Windows 10. Clean Boot is a process of disabling all third-party start-up apps and background services to solve a particular system problem. When some faulty process has been terminated, there is a good chance that those faulty process will be closed as well.
If possibly clean boot resolves most of the problem, to enable any required services again just do it one-by-one to see which one is causing the problem and disable it.
Remove Malware
Also note that a virus or even malware can also surge RAM usage. Most malware created to destroy your system mostly puts more pressure on RAM to halt processes. The possible solution to this problem is simply by running a malware scan using a good antivirus program such as Avast free antivirus
Simply install avast on your PC and do a full system scan and should be able find some malware, if you find any just delete it. In case failure occurs, you can also create an Avast Rescue Disk and run a scan while Windows is not operating.
Remove Adware
Not much different from malware, adware may also use loads of RAM in the background. Adware shows ads in the usage of programs, and to download and set up these ads, it will use network connection and system resources, including RAM.
Adwcleaner is one of the best adware cleaners that will clean your PC of all adware and even unwanted program that may be using some RAM. Just scan your PC with Adwcleaner and it will find and delete all types unrequired programs.
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