Last week, I had an issue where I had 8GB of RAM, but only 3 was being used. We fixed that with a setting in MSCONFIG.

Now, my RAM use starts low (2GB) and over a 4 yr period, it creeps up to 7GB, even at idle. Its more than superfetch, becuase the whole computer slows to a snails pace.

I've tried turning off different known memory hogs (McAfee, CHROME), still no use. I've run all the AV scans...no luck.

I presume it must be a setting for Windows 8 x64? Any suggestions of a checklist I should look into?

Hi windows,

For a start, try to run an anti-virus program to check whether your computer has been infected ot not. If found, just remove them.

Take a look at resmon (memory tab) to get an indication of which applications are consuming resources. That's an awful lot of CPU activity too, although if you're swapping data in and out of the paging file that's more likely the cause of the slowdowns than a pegged CPU.