I have been using the same Windows 11 Installation since 7/5/2022, and I have noticed that the memory usage was jumping up to 22GB of memory used when on the desktop. I had 32GB memory but upgraded to 64 GB.
Maybe I need to free some bloatware and free some memory?
Before
Before I attempt to free up bloatware on my system, here is a before state of memory and processes on my system. I used the Windows built-in task Manager to view resources.
23GB Memory Used
444 Processes, 9.3K Threads and 3.4 Million Handled
Removing Bloatware from Windows 11
Warning: No warranty is given to the steps below; you can easily break your computer if you remove or disable the wrong things. Do take a backup of your system and files.
I downloaded the Ultimate Windows Utility app from The Ultimate Windows Utility (christitus.com)
Tip found via
Tip for The Ultimate WIndowss Utility found via NortoDan
To run this, I ran the following PowerShell Command
iwr -useb https://christitus.com/win | iex
This is what the application looks like.
I clicked the Tweaks tab and then the Desktop button.
I ticked these settings that I knew were not going to break my system,.
I clicked Run Tweaks button and rebooted my PC.
Nice, that’s over 100 processes eliminated after a reboot.
Disabling Unwanted Windows Services
I opened the Windows Services as an Administrator.
From here I sorted by running services and disabled the
Use Right Click, then select Disable to see if memory usage goes down, then Double click the item, select Stop, and select StartUp Type Disabled to permanently diable the service on startup.
I did not disable critical services of system services.
Microsoft SysInternal Tools
I downloaded the awesome and free Microsoft SysInternals tools from Microsoft.
Sysinternals Suite – Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn
Download this and save it to e.g C:\Utils\SysInternals
The most common tools I use from this suite are
Process Monitor
Monitor file system, Registry, process, thread and DLL activity in real-time.
Disk Usage (DU)
View disk usage by directory.
TCPView
Active socket command-line viewer.
Process Explorer
Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.
PortMon
Monitor serial and parallel port activity with this advanced monitoring tool. It knows about all standard serial and parallel IOCTLs and even shows you a portion of the data being sent and received. Version 3.x has powerful new UI enhancements and advanced filtering capabilities.
Autoruns
See what programs are configured to startup automatically when your system boots and you login. Autoruns also shows you the full list of Registry and file locations where applications can configure auto-start settings.
Process Monitor
Monitor file system, Registry, process, thread and DLL activity in real-time.
SysInternal AutoRuns will show all the places that software can be started (at startup or user interaction with Windows). I disabled the software that I did not need. I was careful not to disable drivers or system applications.
I used SysInternal TPCView to see what software was using my Network, and I found a few rather clatty services associated with my backup software.
I disabled the Protection in the Acronis App but this had no affect on the background network adctivity
The older non-subscription-based Acronis True Image 2021 software I use has Ransomware protection that can not be disabled. The only way to disable it was to stop this “Acronis Active Protection (TM) Service).
I rebooted my machine, and active processes and threads were coming down. Memory usage was a lot lower.
I re-ran SysInternal TCPView to see if the remaining apps were not chatty. Only my STreamdeck apps were talking to the network.
SysInternal Process Monitor is also awesome for seeing a real-time list of all activity of a system at that given time. This list can give insight into background activity that I did not realise was happening.
I disabled apps and services that I did not want running.
I then used SysInternals Process Explorer to show a tree view of apps running on my system.
Sorting the treeview by memory is useful.
I repeated all of the above until I had nothing left to disable or remove
After
Before
23GB Memory Used
444 Processes, 9.3K Threads and 3.4 Million Handles
After
6.8GB Memory Used
213 Processes, 3.8K Threads and 1.3 Million Handles
That is not bad for an hours work.
Good luck