High RAM Usage

[balala]

Update=-1 is a special case, that tells Rainmeter to update the skin only once when loaded or refreshed, and never again. This is only going to be practical or useful in a skin like a launcher/dock or other skin that doesn't need to be "updated", as it is entirely "event-driven" by mouse actions.

Well, my question was what means Update=0? I know and understood what Update=-1 means, but Update=0 had no sense in my opinion. But reading your last post jsmorley, now it's clear.

[jsmorley]

I'm going to try changing everything to a higher Update frequency, especially the background skins. Currently everything is at Update=0, so my understanding is that's what is causing my instability. I'll report back with my results.

Well, while I don't see any one-to-one correlation between an Update rate that is far faster than it needs to be and any increase in memory usage, (CPU usage, certainly) if Rainmeter has a lot of skins that are trying to update faster than Rainmeter can keep up, and causing some general instability in the behavior of the skins, I suppose anything is possible.

As far as memory goes, Rainmeter has a certain amount it uses to "stand up" the application itself. Then each skin loaded will take some additional memory, depending on the size of the skin window, the number of images it uses, etc. Each Rainmeter plugin .dll used in a skin will take some memory, which is not allocated until the plugin is first "used" by the skin.

None of these things are ever loaded in memory more than once, and aside from seeing some one-time growth in overall memory usage when a plugin like InputText or FileView is first used by the skin, I'm not sure I see any way that Rainmeter, or the default skins that come with it can ever "leak" memory. What IS possible is that a 3rd-party plugin could misbehave. However, I don't see any 3rd-party stuff in that Desktop+++ suite of skins, so I'm a little stumped how it, in and of itself, could cause runaway memory usage.

I do agree that setting all Update=0 to Update=1000 is a good first step.

[ddrees]

I've attached a screenshot of my Rainmeter plugin list. Anything look out of the ordinary? I just changed the Update settings, and am holding at 41MB memory usage for now.

[fonpaolo]

All the plugins are correct as their size in KB.

I have noticed some differences between 32 and 64 bit OS, using the same screen dimension, the same resolution, the same number of skins, the same skins and plugins, the memory usage is almost doubled in 64 bit OS...

Oh, I forgot to say... I found many skins lately and most of them, even if they doesn't use any animation, have Update variable from 10 to 100, even some with 1.
I wish to know why.

[balala]

Update=0 will not be obeyed, but will default to Update=16, the lowest possible value. Even Update=16 though is likely to cause most skins to behave erratically, and to just tear up your CPU.

And if I use a smaller value then 16 for the Update, the skin will work as with Update=16? So, can't use any smaller value then 16? Interesting, why exactly this value is the smallest permitted value?

[ddrees]

Well I changed each skins Update frequency to 1000 or higher, but I'm still experiencing a progressive memory ramp. The ramp is definitely slower and is currently at 120MB compared to 41MB over the past 4 hours. Should I keep increasing the Update frequency to see if eventually it mitigates the problem, or is there anything else I should check?

[fonpaolo]

The suggestions I can give you maybe aren't so simple, but you can exclude from the update everything that doesn't really need any update, using

Code: Select all

UpdateDivider=-1

For example:
- images (background, icons and every image that doesn't change in any way);
- text strings (titles and every text that remains always the same)

You can also use UpdateDivider with some measures, but in this case it depends from Update and the kind of measure.

[jsmorley]

If one of those skins is really "leaking" memory somehow, messing with the UpdateDivider and all that is only going to "mask" the problem a bit, by making it take longer to get bad. I really have no idea right off how any skin that isn't using a 3rd-party plugin or addon could cause Rainmeter itself to use increasingly more memory over time.

[fonpaolo]

jsmorley you're right, as always, I was thinking to avoid the reload of some big images, maybe resized using W and H, other than that I can't really think about anything who could cause that problem.

I only have experienced some problems caused by WebParser (but mostly with CPU usage, more than memory) and mostly when there's no connection (using WiFi).

[ddrees]

If one of those skins is really "leaking" memory somehow, messing with the UpdateDivider and all that is only going to "mask" the problem a bit, by making it take longer to get bad. I really have no idea right off how any skin that isn't using a 3rd-party plugin or addon could cause Rainmeter itself to use increasingly more memory over time.

Ok now I'm just curious what exactly is going on here, so I'm going to start removing individual skins and see if one in particular is causing the ramp. Hopefully it's just one particular piece that is hanging and causing a "backlog" or something.