Web provider goes up to 65MB memory usage

[crow]

Hi
I use Avast home edition and have noticed that somehow the web provider goes up from about 14MB to 65MB memory usage!!!! and this is happening from surfing with no special tasks and no hanging around questionable sites .If I stop the provider and then reactivate it , it goes back down to 14MB.Memory data usage, gathered from Process Explorer  by Sis Internals and verified with task manager + warning from tune up pro about web provider extensive high memory usage.
Any help will be welcomed here.
Thanks

[calcu007]

What website were you browsing when this happen?

[crow]

What website were you browsing when this happen?

As I mentioned previously, I never hang around questionable sites+ I have no way of knowing exactly at what site it sores up to 65MB as I`m not getting any instant warning.

[calcu007]

What website were you browsing when this happen?

As I mentioned previously, I never hang around questionable sites+ I have no way of knowing exactly at what site it sores up to 65MB as I`m not getting any instant warning.

In the webprovider settings you can chose "show detailed information in performed action",  then you will what files is scanning

[DavidR]

The more tabs you have open in firefox, the more the web shield will be scanning. This really is normal behaviour, you brows, web shield scans and windows is basically incharge of memory control, e.g handing back memory if needed by other applications.

How much RAM do you have left (as 65mb from 1GB is a drop in the ocean), because it is there to be used or you end up slowing your system down as what is in memory has to be swapped out to the pagefile.sys. If it is subsequently required it has to be swapped back into memory, this is much slower than if it remained in RAM (and why windows doesn't hand it back quickly) and it also thrashes your hard disk.

So I would suggest that you audit what is running in the background, and only have essential applications running and if that leaves little in the way of RAM left then you need to get more RAM, it is real cheap now and another 1GB would be great in XP Pro. It is what I use and have 2GB and I never have to worry about RAM.

[crow]

How much RAM do you have left (as 65mb from 1GB is a drop in the ocean), because it is there to be used or you end up slowing your system down as what is in memory has to be swapped out to the pagefile.sys. If it is subsequently required it has to be swapped back into memory, this is much slower than if it remained in RAM (and why windows doesn't hand it back quickly) and it also thrashes your hard disk.

I`m running around about 55% of RAM. I did not understand the page file issue in your reply, can you elaborate on this please?
Thanks

[DavidR]

When you use applications, they need RAM to load and to work, when RAM starts to get low, information that is in RAM is swapped (copied) to the pagefile.sys a special file for that purpose. This is normally on a which information in RAM is oldest gets swapped out first, this frees up memory for other applications needing more memory.

Should a program try to access the information that was previously in memory it has to be reloaded into memory from the pagefile.sys file. This if you are already low on memory may require something else in RAM to be swapped out.

It is slower assessing information on your hard disk than if it is loaded into memory and that is why programs load into memory and try to store working information/data there to. If you don't have a lot of RAM, but have lots of programs all wanting to run and little ram then windows is constantly swapping information/data back and forwards between RAM and the hard disk (pagefile.sys).

[crow]

I still fail to understand why the web provider jumps up to 65MB and get stuck there until I shut it off and restart. Could it be a memory leak?

[Reductase]

Memory leaks are measued using Private Bytes - is that the column in Process Explorer you are looking at?

Private bytes are the current number of bytes a process has allocated that cannot be shared with other processes—in other words, how much non-shared memory your process is using.  In XP Task Manager this corresponds to the VM Size column.  This memory is more important than shared memory when multiple processes execute on a PC and is the primary counter for measuring memory leaks and overall memory usage.  Some of this memory could be swapped to disk at some point and not affecting other apps in RAM. Still, this is the amount of memory the app uses in a non-shared way and is important to minimize and if it grows appreciably over time it represents a memory leak.

The Working Set refers to the number of pages of memory committed to a given process, both shared and private - also called  Mem Usage in Task Manager. This is everything that is being kept in RAM for that process at the time it is measured. This will fluctuate over time as compared to VM Size which shouldn't.   Since shared memory is included, if another app does need the memory space it can be released so size is not as big an issue.

[crow]

Memory leaks are measued using Private Bytes - is that the column in Process Explorer you are looking at?

Private bytes are the current number of bytes a process has allocated that cannot be shared with other processes—in other words, how much non-shared memory your process is using.  In XP Task Manager this corresponds to the VM Size column.  This memory is more important than shared memory when multiple processes execute on a PC and is the primary counter for measuring memory leaks and overall memory usage.  Some of this memory could be swapped to disk at some point and not affecting other apps in RAM. Still, this is the amount of memory the app uses in a non-shared way and is important to minimize and if it grows appreciably over time it represents a memory leak.

The Working Set refers to the number of pages of memory committed to a given process, both shared and private - also called  Mem Usage in Task Manager. This is everything that is being kept in RAM for that process at the time it is measured. This will fluctuate over time as compared to VM Size which shouldn't.   Since shared memory is included, if another app does need the memory space it can be released so size is not as big an issue.

Hi
Thanks for you reply. When I read 65MB (web provider)it was from the working set. Right know for example I`m reading: 14MB working set and 32MB private bites