Windows Explorer massive memory consumption
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 8:42 pm
I was working on a customer's system today that was incredibly slow. I mean worse than 90 weight transmission oil in Minnesota in the dead of winter.
In the Windows Task Manager > Resource Monitor > Memory (tab), the category called Modified would steadily grow until it eliminated all Free Memory, then it would drop again, and start all over again. I noticed that memory consumption by Excel was steadily increasing and dropping in the same way, and figured out that if I turned off the Windows Explorer Preview function, then everything went back to very favorable levels, and the system was again quick to respond.
Any ideas what would cause this? (I dislike the preview window myself, and never use it, so I don't know what to expect as normal behavior.) It is running Windows 7 Pro SP1, 64-bit, with 4 GB RAM. (In comparison, my system here at home just has 2 GB RAM, and 32-bit OS, but the Modified category takes up a very small portion of the memory, as the customer's system as well, after I turned off the Preview Pane (pain).)
In the Windows Task Manager > Resource Monitor > Memory (tab), the category called Modified would steadily grow until it eliminated all Free Memory, then it would drop again, and start all over again. I noticed that memory consumption by Excel was steadily increasing and dropping in the same way, and figured out that if I turned off the Windows Explorer Preview function, then everything went back to very favorable levels, and the system was again quick to respond.
Any ideas what would cause this? (I dislike the preview window myself, and never use it, so I don't know what to expect as normal behavior.) It is running Windows 7 Pro SP1, 64-bit, with 4 GB RAM. (In comparison, my system here at home just has 2 GB RAM, and 32-bit OS, but the Modified category takes up a very small portion of the memory, as the customer's system as well, after I turned off the Preview Pane (pain).)