Summary
“This is the year when I finally upgrade my puny 8GB of DDR4 RAM to a higher capacity DDR5 unit,” is what I thought at the start of 2025. Boy, was I naive. Thanks to the data center boom, there’s a global RAM shortage, or to use the parlance of our times, a ‘RAMpocalypse’, that has driven up RAM prices to unprecedented levels. There are no good RAM deals in this economy. So I’m waiting. Meanwhile, I wanted the existing RAM on my PC to go to apps I actually use instead of being used by Windows services I rarely touch, or never do. The first thing I did to accomplish this was to measure what processes were using the most memory when Windows was idle. I’ll admit, the results weren’t what I expected. The Windows processes eating up the most memory were critical ones that shouldn’t be set to manual. But, after tinkering around, I still managed to reclaim some RAM by finding 3 Windows services that could be set to manual without affecting how I use my PC. Finding the Windows services taking up my RAM I used an app that was more detailed than Task Manager To measure the RAM usage on my PC, I ditched the Task Manager, and opted for Process Explorer instead. And it’s not because Task Manager is inaccurate, it’s just that Process Explorer is so much more detailed, and makes it easier to see which specific service is being used by a background process. Process Explorer is part of the Windows Sysinternals Suite, which contains a bunch of other useful Windows utilities as well. However, if you don’t need the other utilities, you can download Process Explorer separately from this Windows Learn webpage. It’s an archive, so just extract it to a destination of your choice. Then, depending on your system, run the relevant executable: procexp64.exe for 64-bit systems, procexp.exe for 32-bit systems, or procexp64a.exe for ARM systems. In Process Explorer, the column you want to focus on is Working Set, which shows the memory (private, and shared) being used by the process. The app highlights services in pink, and considering how bloated Windows can be, I expected background Windows services I’d never heard of to be leading the pack when it came to RAM usage. And it was true. In fact, some services periodically used up more RAM than my web browser when idle. The only catch being that they were essential Windows services that I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) set to Manual. But, digging deeper, I found some services that serve no purpose for me, yet were taking up memory on my PC. These services take up precious RAM on my PC These can be safely set to Manual The Windows Service taking up the most RAM on my computer was MsMpEng.exe, the Microsoft Defender Antivirus Service. Setting this to Manual wasn’t a choice, so I focused on the other services that Process Explorer showed me. I ended up selecting these three:
- The Print Spooler service (spoolsv.exe) that was taking up anywhere from 22MB to 70MB of RAM when measured at idle at different times. This service manages print jobs on your PC, so, if you don’t own a printer, it’s safe to set this to Manual.
- Connected User Experiences and Telemetry (DiagTrack) that was using 56MB to 163MB of memory on average. The service responsible for collecting “diagnostic data” and reporting it to Microsoft. I went ahead and disabled this altogether.
- Microsoft Office Click to Run Service (ClickToRunSvc), which again was taking up anywhere from 31MB to 150MB of RAM depending on when I measured it. This service is responsible for updating Microsoft 365. I don’t use Microsoft Office, so there was no need to have this running all the time. Most services will be listed as svchost.exe in Process Explorer. To view the exact service, hover your cursor over the svchost.exe entry with high RAM usage, or right-click, and choose Properties. Services can be set to Manual using the Services app: press Windows Key + R to open the Run app, type services.msc, and press Enter. In the Services app, right-click the desired service > Properties, and select Manual from the Startup type drop-down menu. It’s always safer to set services to Manual instead of disabling them outright. That way, the service won’t run unless strictly required. In addition to these, I disabled (or set to Manual) several other Windows Services that were each taking up small amounts of RAM, but combined, they were enough to make a difference. This includes SearchIndexer.exe (WSearch), or Windows Search, because I don’t really use it that much. There were also CrossDeviceService.exe and PhoneExperienceHost.exe related to Phone Link, that took up around 180MB of RAM combined: I simply disabled Phone Link to prevent these and other related services from running. Be careful which services you set to Manual There are a dizzying number of Windows Services running in the background each time you use your computer. The ones you set to Manual could be different from mine. A good way to find services you can set to Manual, is to see which Windows features you don’t use, like Phone Link or the XBOX integration. Then, search for services exclusively used by these features, and disable them. It may not make a huge difference to those of you with oodles of RAM, but for those of us suffering under the brunt of the RAMpocalypse, freeing up several hundred MB of RAM has a noticeable impact.