Why does extended uptime slow down a pc?

Devrij · 20 Nov 2013 at 13:36

I don't have this issue at home, but at work I just lock my pc so I can come in and pick up where I left off. By the 2nd half of the week tabs become unresponsive in chrome, docs slow to open etc. The whole system feels sluggish until a reboot.

This is on an i5 and W7 with 4GB RAM. Surely 4GB is enough for chrome (I admit it's two windows with maybe 5 tabs each) and some word docs? I thought W7 was smarter about dumping unused files in the RAM anyway, so why is it slower after a few days of uptime?

I'm not trying to solve the issue (it would be a handy byproduct though), but mainly to understand why it happens in the first place.

Any ideas?

Glanza · 20 Nov 2013 at 14:00

Look at your ram usage at the start of the week compared to when it starts slowing down, have a feeling chrome will not be far off eating all your ram if you never reboot it.

Devrij · 20 Nov 2013 at 17:15

Certainly chrome uses a fair bit of RAM, but I still have 1.2GB of the 4GB free and that's after at least a week running. It's never close to maxed out. Even so, why would the RAM usage grow over time? Wouldn't W7 clear files out after a certain period of disuse? That's what I'm trying to get my head around.

theheyes · 20 Nov 2013 at 17:27

What happens if you quit Chrome and open up the tabs again?

Devrij · 21 Nov 2013 at 14:06

theheyes said:
What happens if you quit Chrome and open up the tabs again?

It helps, but doesn't have the same effect as a reboot. It seems to be system wide issue. Tabs with Gmaps become virtually unresponsive, which is a pain when I'm trying to pretend I know the area my client is calling from

bledd · 21 Nov 2013 at 16:59

Can't say I've seen this in W7.

In XP, certainly rebooting helped the rubbish memory management.

With W7, and SSD and plenty of RAM, I only reboot for Windows Updates.