RAM keeps filling up causing very sluggish browser response.

[Doug]

Advice requested.

My Dell computer is loading RAM to the point of causing my browsers to have a sluggish performance.

I have brought up the resource manager showing where it starts upon booting up and where it ends up twenty minutes later.

I have run the MS Defender Antivirus (offline scan) and RAM still loads up to the maximum. 

I am still looking for whatever program is loading all this into RAM.

I think it is other than Windows Defender.

Any tips?

[Doug]

I have countered this problem by loading up all the programs I anticipate using during a session immediately after booting up, before the unidentified cause gradually takes up 95% of the RAM. The computer works fairly well this way. I am still trying to nail the cause for the RAM hogging. Perhaps it is OneDrive, or possibly even malware. I noticed that the amount of RAM taken up is about 16GB, which is the maximum capacity on the Dell computer. My HP computer has 32G of RAM and it loads up around 16GB also. I will eventually figure out what program is overloading the RAM on the Dell computer.

[Alan J. Raul]

May I suggest downloading and running Microsoft Sysinternals Autoruns. This app is a single exe and does not install. Autoruns shows which apps startup when Windows boots up.

You can uncheck questionable startup apps. If you determine that malware is starting up you can delete them. Be careful if you decide to delete a startup app. It's best to uncheck it first.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns