I have a Dell XPS 13 manufactured in 2019 with 8 GB of RAM. For about eight months, it has had severe memory-usage problems. Removing Adobe software appeared to fix the issue for roughly five months, but the problem has returned. With no programs open, Windows consistently reports 78–83% memory usage. Chrome can run for around 30 minutes with just one tab before the laptop runs out of memory and crashes, while Opera usually closes within five minutes. CPU usage stays below 3% when idle.
I have already run Dell's hardware diagnostics, boot-time diagnostics, and several virus scans. The battery is also in poor health, although the laptop is mainly used for watching YouTube. The latest Performance data shows 6.1 GB in use, 30.2/31.8 GB committed, a 392 MB paged pool, and a 1008 MB non-paged pool. How can I identify what is consuming the memory, and could this be a Windows or hardware problem?
2 Answers
First, capture Task Manager while the problem is happening. Sort the Processes list by memory usage and also check the Performance and Details tabs. The committed memory figure is especially concerning: 30.2 of 31.8 GB means Windows has almost exhausted its commit limit, even though only 6.1 GB is shown as actively in use. That points to a process or driver steadily reserving memory, or a problem with the page file. Resource Monitor or PoolMon can help identify a driver-related leak if the normal process list does not show the culprit.
A clean Windows reinstall is a practical next step if the diagnostics and malware scans are clean. Back up your files, verify the Windows activation status, and reinstall from official installation media rather than restoring the existing system image. If the issue continues on a fresh Windows installation, test the laptop with a Linux live USB. A memory problem that also appears outside Windows would make faulty RAM or another hardware issue more likely; if Linux runs normally, the problem is probably Windows, a driver, or installed software.
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