If you have been using Windows 10 for some time, you will have noticed that whenever you start the computer, the memory consumption is at least 50%. It doesn't matter if you have a 2GB, 4GB or 8GB RAM, it will always consume half from the system boot. Is this normal? If you have a powerful memory and you also have some control with the programs that start at startup, the system should not consume so much RAM. Or at least that's what logic dictates.
What is the cause?
Our operating system uses RAM memory to store the data and files of the programs we use in order to access them in a faster way. Therefore, instead of accessing that information that is on the hard drive, Windows copies it to memory to speed up management.
But why does Windows consume so much memory if we have just started the computer and we are not running any programs yet? The culprit has a name and surname: Superfetch. This Windows service is in charge of seeing which programs we use the most frequently and loads them into memory before we even use them. In this way, when we want to load said program, Windows already has it in RAM memory and its access and execution is faster than if it had to take it from the hard disk and load it into memory when we ask it.
Can Superfetch be disabled?
If we don't want Windows to think for us and make that unnecessary consumption of RAM, we can disable Superfetch:
- By right clicking on the Windows start button we select "Run"And we write the command"services.msc”. You can also type this command in Cortana if it is more comfortable for you.
- Once starting the service panel we look for the one corresponding to "Superfetch", And with the right button on the service click on"Properties”.
- We will see that the start type is in "Automatic”. Let's leave it "Disabled" and then we will stop the process, as shown in the picture.
Make sure to disable and stop the service- Apply the changes and restart the computer.
After disabling Superfetch, your computer should consume less RAM. In any case, if we see that the decrease in RAM consumption has not been very remarkable, we can lighten the memory consumption at startup by disabling some of the programs that load automatically when the system starts. Perhaps these are programs that we do not use much and it does not make much sense for Windows to consume resources in these applications:
- We open the "Task Manager”(Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and we go to the tab“Beginning”. Here we can see all the applications that Windows loads automatically every time we start our system. We will sort the programs by the field "Startup impact”.
Review programs with high startup impact- The programs that have a high impact are those that consume the most resources, so we will disable those that we do not use regularly or that we will simply start when we want to use them. We can disable them by selecting the program and clicking on "To disable”.
After this the system should lighten the RAM consumption at startup significantly. In our case, after disabling Superfetch and removing a couple of startup programs, we have managed to reduce RAM consumption at startup by 20%.
Windows keeps consuming too much RAM
If after these couple of tips our system continues to consume too much RAM, the cause of the problem may be another:
- We have some type of virus or malware on the computer that is consuming our resources. To solve it we recommend the following article.
- Microsoft confirmed that they had detected high consumption of resources due to compatibility problems with the drivers of some sound and graphics cards. Update your video and audio card drivers to fix the problem.
