How To Clear Your Memory Without Restarting

Posted on December 30th, 2007 by Jason

If you run a windows computer you’ll know like many others than after a while your system will in doubt start running slow. Most people will restart their computer to remove and idle processes. But if there’s a simpler way, why restart every time windows decides it doesn’t like you today?

1. Right click on an empty spot on your desktop and select New – Shortcut.

2. Type %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks in the box.

3. Click Next.

4. Give your shortcut a nice name like “Clear Memory”.

5. Click Finish and you’re done.

Now whenever your computer starts running slow click this shortcut to clear out your memory and get your computer running at a normal pace again.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Computer, Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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12 Responses to “How To Clear Your Memory Without Restarting”

  1. StumbleUpon - Your page is now on StumbleUpon! on 31 Dec 2007 at 9:45 pm #

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  2. lilai on 25 Jun 2008 at 12:57 am #

    it doesn’t work. it says missing entry: processidletasks. what’s that?

  3. ostap on 26 Aug 2008 at 4:40 pm #

    same here. Does not work with the same error

  4. dogatuna on 09 Oct 2008 at 3:57 pm #

    hhi
    how could I delete and clear my memory..Could you help me please

  5. Larry Miller on 12 Oct 2008 at 9:48 pm #

    WRONG
    The description of the command mentioned is completely wrong. By default Windows schedules a number of maintenance tasks to take place every 3 days during idle time. This way these tasks can not interfere with application performance. The command mentioned will initiate these tasks immediately. It will not teminate any tasks and it will not free memory.

    The command may require up to 15 minutes to run and there will be no notification when done. Disk activity may be high and interference with applications may occur. You do not want to do this before an intensive program is run.

    Most users will have little or no use for this command. Laptop users may require it as these systems will not enter idle mode under battery operation and idle tasks will not run.

    References:
    http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html

    Larry Miller
    Microsoft MCSA

  6. Arun on 05 Feb 2009 at 3:43 am #

    I find many web pages suggesting this as a method of clearing a memory.
    Though not sure whether it really clears the memory, Lara miller’s comment is worth to note.

  7. koenig on 24 Jun 2009 at 5:41 pm #

    it does’nt work also for me. when i click the shortcut its direct me to the windows folder.

  8. Jonathan Lewery on 27 Jun 2009 at 5:02 pm #

    Worked like a charm. Photoshop has a funny bug when there is little memory that none of the tools work and all you get is the hand icon for the mouse. This sorted it straight away. Thank you very much. Not sure why everyone else is having a problem. It could have been coincidence that it photoshop corrected itself right after I double-clicked the shortcut. If it happens again I will try it and post back.

  9. Tim on 25 Jul 2009 at 11:48 pm #

    Works Fine FOr Me
    it fixed my prob :D

  10. L. Martinez on 31 Aug 2009 at 3:16 pm #

    I want to get rid permantely of some of the websites that I have visited. How do you do this?

  11. PT on 29 Nov 2009 at 2:57 am #

    Didn’t get any errors. But didn’t free up any memory either. Windows XP Media Center SP3.

  12. Phyllis on 06 Dec 2009 at 11:18 am #

    I put in the link for the new shortcut to clear the memory, but it said file can’t be found. How can I clean the memory???

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