Solved: System Restore and RAM

[DefConDelta]

When System Restore is running, does it actually use up a lot of memory?

 

[Claymore]

To check this, do a Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager. In the Processes window click on CPU at the top so that 'System Idle Process' is at the top.
Start System Restore and look for 'sr'. You will see the % of CPU resources being used and in the 'Mem Usage' column, the amount of memory required by the program.

 

[DefConDelta]

I guess what I meant was: I have System Restore enabled, which runs constantly. I don't want to restore anything right now, just needed to know how much memory it uses while running daily.

Someone told me that it uses so many megabytes to keep it going in the background and I didn't think it used that much memory. I know it takes up a lot of space on a hard drive but I didn't think it used up a lot of memory keeping it in the background.

Thanks !

 

[Claymore]

OK.
The System Restore program (with the default settings) creates one restore point in each 24-hour period. It will only create one if/when the computer is in an "idle" state.
What is running in the background is the System Restore service if System Restore is enabled. It is running in the 1204 instance of svchost.exe. On my machine this is 24.6 MB, but this includes 25 other services that are also running in the background, so the System Restore service usage of RAM is minimal..

 

[DefConDelta]

Thanks Claymore. This is what I wanted. I didn't think the service would use up a whole lot of MB's; however, I had someone argue with me that with only 194MB of memory it hampers their online game playing, to leave it enabled.

I don't know. Maybe it would be better for them to disable the service. They're only going to use the PC for online gaming and email.

Thanks again.

 

[Claymore]

Yes, point taken. There used to be a lot of talk and suggestions about disabling (or setting to Manual) a whole bunch of services. This was when folks were running with minimal RAM - 128MB, 256MB or so, and slower processors. In these instances, shaving 20MB would make a noticible difference (and, hopefully, reduce load time). This might be the case for your friend with only 192MB, where every MB counts. In any situation, there's no point loading and running services that will never be called for, e.g. if the computer isn't on a network and doesn't connect to the internet, not even for updates. With more recent systems with RAM of 1GB or more, and dual processors, it becomes less of an issue.

 

[DefConDelta]

Thanks very much Claymore. You've completed my question thoroughly!