URGENT: Ram Usage Problem

[Sinister_kid]

Hey everybody.. I'm new on this forum but not new to the computer world (well may be now since things have changed alot since I last worked with computers on a hardware level.)

Anyways. I'm currently on a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop. It has a 2.2Ghz Dual Core Intel Processor paired with 3GB DDR2 800Mhz Dual Channel (Not sure how you get 3GB out of dual channel). The computer is running slow as hell, it's even pausing at points of typing this out to catch up to what I'm typing, so I pulled up task manager and looked at the RAM/CPU Usage and it's currenly using 95% of the Physical Memory.

I don't have anything crazy open. Mozilla Firefox with 3 tabs open (nothing streaming or anything) and then Microsoft Word with 3 pages open. I'm also running windows 7.

Any ideas on why the computer is using up so much ram? And how could i fix the slowness problem? I figured I could get more ram or get better ram but I don't have much money to spend right now on computer parts.

I just typed half that last paragraph and had to let the computer think for a few seconds before it typed it out. The toolbar won't even pull up for a few seconds after I put my cursor over it.

Any help is greatly appreciated!! Thanks guy!

 

[foothead]

I'm assuming you have rebooted....?

Your computer probably has something running in the background. Check your processes.

Also run malwarebyte's. Could easily be an infection.

 

[Sinister_kid]

I just rebooted and before opening anything the computer is running at already half the physical memory. Which still doesn't seem right to me.

I will run the program you suggested though.

 

[Grantofhell]

I've had this problem with a few rigs I've worked on. It's a virus that runs thousands of Internet Explorer instances in the background. It's hard to say "just run a scan" because the computer eventually gets too overloaded on PR and crashes. And I don't remember if Se7en can boot into Safe Mode. If it can, boot to Safe Mode and do virus scans from there.

 

[foothead]

^Does anyone scan without first booting into safe mode?

 

[Grantofhell]

Whatcha mean?

 

[Sinister_kid]

^Does anyone scan without first booting into safe mode?

... Me..

The scan is running at the moment and has an elapsed time of 25 minutes. No slowing down or anything at the moment and nothing has been picked up yet.

 

[foothead]

Whatcha mean?

Doesn't pretty much everyone already do that?

 

[Grantofhell]

Not everyone. It may be standard code for the naturals here, but not everyone knows what to do in this case. They stumble upon a forum and ask for help. That's what we're here for.

I understand he made it clear he knew his way around a rig, but I also put out solutions, even the ones that are obvious. We all forget things sometimes.

 

[GibsonSGKing]

My win7 uses 1436mb of RAM on idle, with just firefox open. It's a fresh install too, hardly anything in the background except for steam.