Startup Ram Consumption

Hi milkway:

What is your Dell computer model and the version and OS build number of your Windows operating system [open a Run dialog box (Windows key + R) and enter winver]?

The amount of RAM your system uses at startup depends on the software installed on your system and which of those installed programs automatically load into memory at system startup, so "normal" is different for everyone.  As a general rule, RAM usage is too high when it consistently exceeds 80–90% of total capacity, which would likely lead to system slowdowns, app crashes or freezing; high RAM usage only becomes a problem if your system needs to use the swap file on your hard drive as virtual memory because you've run low on physical RAM, causing performance degradation. If you're only using 16.1G (24%) of your 64G at startup and don't see any system slowdowns throughout the day while gaming, watching videos, using your browser, etc. then you don't need to be concerned about your RAM usage.

Just for comparison, when I boot up my Inspiron 5584 / Win 10 laptop with 8 GB total RAM it uses about 45% of my physical RAM, and most of that RAM is consumed by my Microsoft Defender antivirus and my Malwarebytes anti-malware real-time protection. When I open my default Firefox browser (one open tab only) my RAM usage jumps to about 55%.  I don't notice any excessive RAM usage or poor system performance, even with that small amount of RAM.

NOTE: I removed ALL SupportAssist-related software (including Dell SupportAssist, Dell SupportAssist Remediation, and Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery Plugin for Dell Update) in March 2023 after my Dell service warranty expired because they were too buggy and consumed too much RAM and CPU - see my 08-Feb-2025 post in ygil’s BSOD Issues After Windows Updates. The only Dell software I still have on my system is the My Dell v2.2.6.0 UWP app and the companion Fusion Service it requires.

To save some RAM usage I went to Settings | Apps | Startup and disabled four apps that I rarely use. It's a waste of memory to have these apps loading at Windows startup and running in the background all day, and I can launch them manually from my Start menu if I ever want to use them.

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Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.7184 * Intel i5-8265U CPU * 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM * 256 GB Toshiba NVMe SSD * Intel UHD Graphics 620 * Firefox v150.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.26030.3011-1.1.26030.3008 * Malwarebytes Standard v5.5.5.253-155.0.5587 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783 * My Dell v2.2.6.0 * Fusion Service v2.2.14.0