How to solve “System And Compressed Memory RAM usage is high” problem? In this post, you can get 10 practical solutions to do it.
" Hi guys, I'm having issues with a System process using 1.2GB of RAM nearly all the time. Some times 3 GB out of my 8GB of RAM. The process is called System and Compressed Memory and comes up as ntoskrnl when I click the search online option. How can I sort "System and Compressed Memory taking high RAM usage" issue out?Thank you in advance.
- Question from answers.microsoft.com
System and Compressed Memory is a process on Windows 10, it works on compressing the files and folders stored on the hard drive, and managing the RAM. When it feels the memory is tight, it will compress the unused pages, so they won't wrote to the physical disk.
This action may reduce the memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to run more applications and be more responsive. In general, the System and Compressed Memory process doesn't occupy much RAM space. But in some forums, some users claimed that this process has a high RAM usage.
When System and Compressed Memory has high RAM usage, the PC will slow down. In some severe cases, you may encounter the computer freezes, system crashes, etc. What causes this process to occupy much RAM?
A possible reason is the mess of the virtual memory settings. For example, if you change the paging file size by setting the value, the System and Compressed Memory process may take up much RAM. Besides, there're other factors to cause the process's high RAM usage, such as viruses, corrupted system files, etc.
In the next part, we'll share 10 methods to fix System and Compressed Memory has high RAM usage.
When you are stuck in System and Compressed Memory taking high CPU or RAM usage, you may be urgent to find out the solutions. Here, you'll get some useful methods.
When there's something wrong with your PC, restarting it may be a method worth trying. Just click "Windows" and select "Restart" in the menu, then the PC will be restarted.
System files refer to the files related to Windows OS, they will directly affect the running of your PC. System files shouldn't be changed randomly, for they're essential for stabilizing the system. If the system files are corrupted, the System and Compressed Memory will take high RAM usage.
Step 1. Press "Windows" and type "cmd", then choose "Run as administrator" to open CMD.
Step 2. Type "sfc /scannow" and press "Enter" to check the system files.
Step 3. If the command doesn't work, input "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth", then press "Enter".
The hidden virus may cause errors on your PC, so you can check and remove viruses from your PC via CMD.
Step 1. Press "Windows", enter "cmd" and press "Enter".
Step 2. In the CMD window, type the commands below and press "Enter".
• H: ("X:" refers to the drive letter of the target partition.) • del *.lnk • attrib -s -r -h *.* /s /d /l
By default, the Paging File Size is automatically managed. If the users change the value by themselves, the action may cause memory compression taking high memory usage problem. Here is the way to reset the Paging File Size.
Step 1. Open the Windows Settings, then input "performance" and click "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows".
Step 2. Then click "Advanced" and "Change" in turn.
Step 3. In the new window, tick "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" and click "OK".
Step 4. In a small pop-up window, click "OK" to reset the Paging File Size.
After setting the Paging File Size, if the System and Compressed Memory still has a high RAM usage, you can disable this process. The detailed steps are as follows:
Step 1. Press "Windows" and input "control panel", then open it. In the new window, select "Small icons" as the view method, then click "Administrative Tools".
Step 2. In the popped-out window, click "Task Scheduler".
Step 3. In the "Task Scheduler" window, click "Task Schedule Library", "Microsoft", "Windows" and "MemoryDiagnostic" in order.
Step 4. Then find out and right-click "RunFullMemoryDiagnosticEntry", then select "Disable".
To solve the error on the System and Compressed Memory, you can adjust the Visual Effects for the best performance.
Step 1. Press "Win+R", then type "sysdm.cpl" and press "Enter".
Step 2. In the new window, click the "Advanced" option and "Settings".
Step 3. Tick "Adjust for best performance" and click "OK".
Step 4. Reboot the PC, seeing if the memory compression taking high memory usage issue is fixed.
The Superfetch is a memory managing mechanism, it can preload the application pages with the free memory space. But in some cases, the Superfetch service will waste much memory. So when the "System And Compressed Memory cost a high RAM usage" issue appears, you can stop the Superfetch service.
Step 1. Press "Win+R" and input "Typeservices.msc" in the Run program, then press "Enter".
Step 2. In the popped window, find out and right-click the Superfetch service, click "Stop".
Sometimes, the Speech Runtime Executable process also may occupy lots of memory space, you can try to end up it to solve this problem.
Step 1. Press "Ctrl + Shift + Esc" to run "Task Manager", then locate the "Speech Runtime Executable" task and right click it.
Step 2. Then select "End task" to stop this process.
If the RAM is damaged, the high RAM usage will also happen. So you can check if the RAM is corrupted.
The System And Compressed Memory cost a high RAM usage issue may be caused by some errors on your hard drive. So you can perform the S.M.A.R.T. test, checking the health condition of the disk.
Here, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, it's an easy and practical freeware. With the help of this tool, you can check the hard drive in just a few clicks. If there're some bad sectors on the disk, it can easily fix them.
In addition, you can also get benefit from other free functions, including PC cleaner, Resize Partition, Wipe hard drive, etc.
PS.: This tool can be available on Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, and if you want to check the hard drive on Windows Server, please turn to the specially designed Server Edition.
Step 1. Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click the hard drive you want to test, right-click "Properties" and "Health(SMART)".
Step 2. If the result is "Health Status: Good", your hard drive is healthy.
Step 3. If the result is "Caution", you can use it normally, but you’d better backup the data on it to prevent the accidental data loss.
Step 4. If you the health status shows Bad, you should figure out the errors and repair them.
Step 5. If the result is bad, you can click "View details" to see the detailed information about your hard drive.
When the result is bad, you can check the partitions, if there're bad sectors, you need to remove them from your hard drive.
Step 1. Right-click the target drive and click "Check Partition" in "Advanced".
Step 2. Select "Check partition and fix errors in this partition by using chkdsk.exe" and click "OK".
Step 3. When the bad sectors are repaired, click "OK".
In this post, we have shared 10 methods to fix "System And Compressed Memory RAM usage is high" issue. You can choose the most suitable one to do it.
When the problem is solved, to deeply manage the hard drive and have a better working efficiency, you can upgrade to the Professional Version. Many advanced functions are provided, such as Disk Clone Wizard, Migrate OS to SSD, Move programs to another drive, etc.