Win11: I can only use 75% of my 32Gb memory, on Win10 I could use all 100% of it.

dimaxxxer · Wednesday at 9:52 AM

gunrunnerjohn said:
OK, inquiring minds want to know. What's the rational for having 100 tabs open?

I agree, this is somewhat silly. I do not keep the open for purpose. I open new tabs all the time and forget to close old ones. I work in Firefox tab, then switch to Cursor, then to tab with Google Sheet document, back and forth and in 2-3 days number of my tabs is about 50-60. I should work on this issue, of course. But my question was mostly about Win11 memory and why I can't use it fully. By the way, yesterday I set my pagefile to 50gb, min and max and the issue of memory is probably gone. Right now I am using 85% which never happened before... Thanks!

gunrunnerjohn · Wednesday at 9:56 AM

That makes some sense, I couldn't figure out how you could realistically use 100 open tabs!

I confess, I never examined the memory situation that closely in Windows 11 as my system has 64GB and usually about 3/4 of it is idle.

Imagine how much money I could make selling my memory!

gunrunnerjohn · Wednesday at 10:09 AM

dimaxxxer said:
By the way, yesterday I set my pagefile to 50gb, min and max and the issue of memory is probably gone. Right now I am using 85% which never happened before... Thanks!

50GB? That's more than your total memory! I just checked, and my page file has grown for whatever reason, it used to hang around 4GB pretty permanently.

dimaxxxer · Wednesday at 11:15 AM

gunrunnerjohn said:
50GB? That's more than your total memory! I just checked, and my page file has grown for whatever reason, it used to hang around 4GB pretty permanently.

View attachment 178661

Yes, it was 25gb when manageb by system and it was full. so I made it 50gb.

Alejandro85 · Wednesday at 11:20 AM

Nothing indicates that you can't use all your memory. If Task Manager and computer settings says it's there, it's usable and Windows considers it.

The initial screenshot says you have some free RAM, nowhere it indicates it's unusable. Most likely Windows paged out the least used things to pagefile (which shows significat usage) to save RAM, which is a good thing in fact. Continuing with the 100 tabs topic, those would consume significat memory, but once you've not touched them in a while (it's unlikely that you're working on all of them) the older ones will get unloaded from RAM into the pagefile.

It's very likely that the memory management changes in Win11 made it more aggresively page things out during RAM presure, specially if you keep the computer running for long periods. Nothing to worry about it, nothing is preventing memory usage. Increasing the pagefile as you just did would give it more room to do such management before reaching a low memory status (which is, in itself, neither a problem).

HeavyHemi · Wednesday at 11:49 AM

Meme time

dimaxxxer · Wednesday at 11:55 AM

Alejandro85 said:
Nothing indicates that you can't use all your memory. If Task Manager and computer settings says it's there, it's usable and Windows considers it.

The initial screenshot says you have some free RAM, nowhere it indicates it's unusable. Most likely Windows paged out the least used things to pagefile (which shows significat usage) to save RAM, which is a good thing in fact. Continuing with the 100 tabs topic, those would consume significat memory, but once you've not touched them in a while (it's unlikely that you're working on all of them) the older ones will get unloaded from RAM into the pagefile.

It's very likely that the memory management changes in Win11 made it more aggresively page things out during RAM presure, specially if you keep the computer running for long periods. Nothing to worry about it, nothing is preventing memory usage. Increasing the pagefile as you just did would give it more room to do such management before reaching a low memory status (which is, in itself, neither a problem).

Thank you for answer! Well, though I had about 25% of free memory I got a warning of low memory and finally everything froze and I could not even close the programs to free memory or close to restart. Had to reset the PC. That's why I am asking, because in practice things are not like they should have been.

MisterEd · Wednesday at 2:17 PM

dimaxxxer said:
Yes, it was 25gb when manageb by system and it was full. so I made it 50gb.

There's your problem. You set a limit and your computer hit that limit. That is what caused your computer to crash.

Your problem you insist on using more memory resources than 99.9% of everyone else. If you actually need those resources then your only choice if to increase them. That is you need to increase your RAM or pagefile size or both. If you can't increase your pagefile size then your only choice is to buy a larger drive.

The follow results are AI generated so may or may not be strictly true. However, they do point to where your solution lies.

Google search, "what happens run out of pagefile even if physical memory available"

AI Overview
When a computer runs out of pagefile space even though physical RAM is free, Windows triggers "out of memory" errors, forces applications to crash, or closes programs. This happens because programs request virtual address space commitment rather than just raw physical RAM, meaning the operating system requires backing pagefile space for allocated memory structures regardless of current physical usage.

Google search, "does windows have a pagefile size limit if the system handles it"

AI Overview
Yes, a system-managed pagefile in Windows has dynamic limits. It typically scales up to 3 times the physical RAM or 4 GB (whichever is larger), but it is strictly capped at one-eighth of the logical volume/drive size, and can expand further only if required for crash dump settings. Absolute technical architecture limits reach up to 16 TB on modern 64-bit systems.

gunrunnerjohn · Wednesday at 2:38 PM

dimaxxxer said:
Yes, it was 25gb when manageb by system and it was full. so I made it 50gb.

If you need a page file that big, there's something very odd going on. Of course, it could be those 100 open tabs...

dimaxxxer · Wednesday at 6:22 PM

MisterEd said:
Th

There's your problem. You set a limit and your computer hit that limit. That is what caused your computer to crash.

Your problem you insist on using more memory resources than 99.9% of everyone else. If you actually need those resources then your only choice if to increase them. That is you need to increase your RAM or pagefile size or both. If you can't increase your pagefile size then your only choice is to buy a larger drive.

The follow results are AI generated so may or may not be strictly true. However, they do point to where your solution lies.

Google search, "what happens run out of pagefile even if physical memory available"

Google search, "does windows have a pagefile size limit if the system handles it"

Hi! Before making my pagefile manually set to 50gb it was set to be managed by windows. I have enough space for it. If needed, Windows could increase it, but it did not. So Windows did not increase the pagefile, did not use 25% of free memory and crashed. I don't think that this was a good idea.

KevTech · Wednesday at 6:36 PM

dimaxxxer said:
Before making my pagefile manually set to 50gb it was set to be managed by windows.

Do you mean Gb or GB?

Gb would be gigabit.

GB would be gigabyte.

Also, if you are running just one stick of ram you are losing on performance as just about all current boards now use dual channel.

dimaxxxer · Friday at 2:46 PM

Ok, final message to everybody - after I set my pagefile to 50Gb (don't know if it is the large size or just manually set size and not windows managed) - I don't have a low memory warning at 75-77%. Today I reached 99% used memory, everything got slow, but nothing froze. Thanks everyone for helping! This place and people here are truly awesome! Very kind, helpful and professional! (much better than on reddit. reddit horribly sucks)

cheaterslick · Friday at 2:57 PM

I keep it simple and use Auto Tab Discard

Auto Tab Discard – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Auto Tab Discard for Firefox. Increase browser speed and reduce memory load and when you have numerous open tabs.

addons.mozilla.org

There's a google chrome version I use in Brave as well.

Puts all your inactive tabs to sleep. I use a sleepy tab all the time for this forum. Just click on the inactive tab and it reloads back into memory.

MysteriousBox · 2026-08-09T01:48:06-0400

dimaxxxer said:
Ok, final message to everybody - after I set my pagefile to 50Gb (don't know if it is the large size or just manually set size and not windows managed) - I don't have a low memory warning at 75-77%. Today I reached 99% used memory, everything got slow, but nothing froze. Thanks everyone for helping! This place and people here are truly awesome! Very kind, helpful and professional! (much better than on reddit. reddit horribly sucks)

Just a heads up, if your computer is using a SSD for OS drive, you will chew through your SSD's TBW (Terabytes Written) whenever you exceed your dedicated RAM.

AdvancedSetup · 2026-08-09T05:30:45-0400

Perhaps true a decade ago or so, but today the SSD real life expectancy before failure shows it's highly unlikely you're going to kill the drive by writing too much to it for the average home user.

The Tech Report Endurance Test Ends Just After 2.4PB
Posted by Scott Michaud | Mar 16, 2015 | Storage | 16

SSD 101: How Reliable are SSDs?

Backblaze Drive Stats for 2025

The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Mid-year Review

Since 2013, Backblaze has collected, curated, and published the annualized failure rates (AFR)
and related statistics from the hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) in our data centers. This collection is the Backblaze Drive Stats dataset. Each quarter we publish updates to the dataset which is open source and can be downloaded using the links in the “Downloading the Drive Stats Dataset” section below.

What you should know about solid state drives (SSDs) - SOLIDIGM (PDF Download)

QLC NAND Technology Is Ready for Mainstream Use in the Data Center

kelper · 2026-08-09T06:59:21-0400

I normally restart my laptop once a day to ensure no memory leaks are wasting RAM. If you have a dozen tabs that you need all the time, put them in a tab group so you can re-open all of them after a daily restart.

dimaxxxer · 2026-08-09T07:07:22-0400

cheaterslick said:
I keep it simple and use Auto Tab Discard

Auto Tab Discard – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Auto Tab Discard for Firefox. Increase browser speed and reduce memory load and when you have numerous open tabs.

addons.mozilla.org

There's a google chrome version I use in Brave as well.

Puts all your inactive tabs to sleep. I use a sleepy tab all the time for this forum. Just click on the inactive tab and it reloads back into memory.

Thank you! I did not like this extension because it refreshes the pages whenever I click on it. Sometimes I don't want the page to be refreshed. But thanks for advising!

dimaxxxer · 2026-08-09T07:08:22-0400

MysteriousBox said:
Just a heads up, if your computer is using a SSD for OS drive, you will chew through your SSD's TBW (Terabytes Written) whenever you exceed your dedicated RAM.

Hi! What do you mean? You mean that pagefile is using my SSD life? But I have a pagefile anyways. There only difference is if it is managed by OS or set manually.

Edwin · 2026-08-09T07:18:00-0400

dimaxxxer said:
I open new tabs all the time and forget to close old ones.

Stop doing that!
And, do you have the browser set to Restore your previous session!?!?!?

KevTech · 2026-08-09T10:40:25-0400

dimaxxxer said:
There only difference is if it is managed by OS or set manually.

Windows will use ram before it uses virtual memory.

But Win 10 and 11 are designed to cache recently opened programs into ram so they reopen faster.

But yes virtual memory uses your hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD) so increasing page file size is going to write more to the HDD or SSD.

On my system I have page file set to windows managed and it is around 4GB and does not change even if I open 100 tabs in Firefox.

I have 32GB of ram running dual channel so 16GB in each channel.

Windows 11 and even 10 for that matter are good enough at managing the page file there should be no reason to set it manually unless your system is seriously misconfigured, you are running a program that has a memory leak or you have a virus.

Win11: I can only use 75% of my 32Gb memory, on Win10 I could use all 100% of it.

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

What's in the box?

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Malwarebytes Staff

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

♦ ♦

My Computers My Computers

At a glance

At a glance

Well-known member

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

My Computer

My Computers

My Computers

My Computer

My Computer

My Computer

My Computer

My Computers

My Computers

My Computer

My Computer

My Computer

My Computers

My Computer

My Computer

My Computers

My Computer

My Computer

My Computers

My Computer