Why is my R11 (4gb version) Chromebook using so much RAM?

zeylemaker · May 2018

So I have the Acer R11 Chromebook with 4gb of RAM and the system monitor show me that the available memory is now about 1.70gb (of 3.8gb..)
Currently I have
* Turned off Play Store
* Disabled all Chrome extentions (except system monitor)
* 1 tab open (to write this..)

I think 1.70gb with so little think running is very little.

With some tabs open+store+extentions the RAM goes all the way down and starts using more SWAP (I enabled SWAP, i'm developer mode. Have installed Linux, but it's not active now)
Memory footprint says in total 295,000k. (Before, when I was using more extentions my chromebook used to crash very very hard by crashing the screen and making a very loud noise)

Even though I bought the 4gb version -and it says everywhere that it's the 4gb kind- i'm starting to think it's only 2gb because the system monitor has Never showed me anything above 2gb available RAM)

Does anyone know what to do?

christy1 · May 2018

Hi,
Try a did you tried to do a powerwash. try to update the chrome after the powerwash as it can be because of update issue also.

Sign out of your Chromebook.
Press and hold Ctrl + Alt + Shift + r.
Click Restart.
In the box that appears, click Reset and sign in with your Google Account. ...
Follow the steps that appear.
Once you've reset your Chromebook:

zeylemaker · May 2018

Thanks for your quick reply. I did not do a powerwash recently, but this RAM problem existed also before this. I don't really wanna do a powerwash because it takes time to put the chromebook back in developermode + installing linux etc.

(Have some more problems with the Chromebook actually, they seem unrelated to the RAM problem, but perhaps worth to mention anyway;
* Today I started the chromebook and it asked again (in a different kind of login screen) for my password + my old password (my chromebook seems to accept both my old&new password, at least some weeks ago it still did), plus it asked again for my wifi password, kinda like it had just been powerwashed. It also looked like it updated Chrome OS even though I don't remember clicking the Update thing. I also changed my background back to standard.
* Also today, when I was disabling the extentions, I was downloading some small file and it said that my hard drive was completely full (10,3gb used) so I could not download it. Then the system became totally unresponsive and could not even open file manager to delete stuff (it only had 150mb stored). Everytime I tried to clear meta data via chrome://drive-internals/ the screen flickered and the "Restore chrome session" button on the top right appeared again. I turned off Google Play Store / Apps and then it responded again because it had freed about 5gb. Now my drive still used 5gb eventhough I deleted all the files + cleared meta data (which I could now access) )

zeylemaker · May 2018

Did a powerwash. Now Chromebook is in regular mode. Still very low on RAM.

Anyone any suggestions? If this is normal I wonder how people use a R11 2gb version

billsey · May 2018

So, what apps do you have installed?

zeylemaker · May 2018

For now I disabled the Play Store and disabled all chrome extentions except System Monitor to check the RAM. Closed all tabs except this one. Available RAM is 2.35gb of 4gb(3.8gb) after just restarting my Chromebook

So only 1 tab + 1 extention are active, that's it. Task manager says memory footprint is only about 400.000k. Another system monitor which I just activated says RAM usage is now 40%. Could they just be very off?