98-100% memory use, no process uses more than 25MB

I am having intermittent issues with my gaming computer. Sometimes, while playing Battlefield 3 (only 2 times the problem has occured), my memory usage goes to 100% of my 16GB machine. I close down BF3 (which is unplayable at this point), open up task manager, and no process uses more than 25MB of memory. Process Explorer shows much the same thing.

The problem disappears aftera reboot.

Any ideas what can be going on here?

Solution 1:

You may have a bad driver which leaks pool memory. Start the TasmkMgr and look at the non paged pool usage value. If this is several GB, you need to do the following:

Install the Windows Driver Kit, run poolmon.exe and look which pooltag causes the high memory usage. If you found the tag, open the cmd prompt and run

findstr /s <Pooltag> *.sys

and look which driver is shown. If it happens while playing games, update the GPU driver. The ATI 12.10 driver is known to cause it. Install the 13.1 WHQL driver to fix it.