PC using ram for no reason

Yeah Chrome loves RAM, but if all the memory used is showing under System, it might just be your SuperFetch system at work.  Try this out for me:

1. Close all programs that are running, and also in the taskbar notification area by the clock, exit anything you can (Chrome might be there, among many other things... I like to tell Chrome not to run in the background silently there but that's just personal preference, I only want it running when I'm using it).
2. Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Escape) and go to the Performance tab.
3. Click Open Resource Monitor
4. Go to the Memory tab

On here, observe how much memory is truly "in use".  The system will usually use a lot of standby RAM, making it look like your RAM is super full, but in reality the standby ram can be cleared in 1/1000th of a second, instantly for any other program to use. So it's not really "full" ram if this is the case.

For example, here's my computer currently below.  I'd love to see your view of this as well if you care to share.

I disabled superfetch, that didn't work, prefetch wasn't at fault either.

I tried also using microsoft support but they can't really test the error, they disable all my programs and say, "hey, that ram is looking pretty free now" and that doesn't help much. They blame some program in the background eating my memory but I don't have anything I didn't in windows 7 and nothing is really weird.

My biggest problem with this is that when the real error occurs I can't do anything to check what is causing it. It isn't very different from a blue screen since I can't do anything but at least blue screens tell you what is wrong (or try to).

I do have some screenshots I managed to take when it happened once, sadly none of the memory tab on resource monitor and they show nothing bat ram usage at 99% and drive activity at 100%.

If I can get the screenshot I'll post it.

It's very sudden and final. Last few times happened while watching a movie, it was doing great but suddenly some frames where dropped, then it jumped between frames and continued like that until I rebooted. 

It's actually been some time, it might be luck or it might be that I closed the most suspicious program (my mouse driver, since it's not from a well known brand).

If I can't see it happen again...

Of course, as I write this I can see some ghost memory usage...

It's not the worst that happens at all, but I'm doing nothing except for the usual background programs and 3 chrome tabs. That can't justify 5661 MB in use right?

I knew it uses a lot ram, I don't mind that, but it never gave me trouble in windows 7. And I'd guess it wouldn't go as far as using up all ram and then go and use the pagefile, that'd make no sense.

After closing it I got similar ram use (I don't know if that's just because it won't show) 

but then again, adding up the numbers used but chorme could account for say 1,5GB? I don't think it adds up.

(out until tomorrow)

Chrome could absolutely account for 1.5 GB (or far, far more).  But even after you've closed it, that looks a little heavy.  Not super terribly bad - you've got about 35% free RAM and that's fairly normal.

I would sort by the committed column (4th column in your view) and look at what has the highest committed amount.  From the looks of it, Avast is using quite a bit (maybe it's scanning right now?), and DWM is using quite a bit more than normal.  Background programs like steam and contribute some.  But really these aren't too bad, especially if they aren't using it and it gets paged out.

I'd go to Task Manager again (probably no need to use SysInternals AutoRuns, but that can't hurt).  On the Startup tab turn off stuff that you can just run-on-demand (for example, does steam need to run in the background or just when you want to play?).

There shouldn't be anything "hiding" -- that is, if you add up all the programs listed and what they're using, it should exactly equal the amount being used. 

It's been a long time since it last happened... It might really have been my mouse controller.