High ram usage while idle on a windows 11 pc

I have tried to upload screenshots as evidence for this on both Firefox and Windows Edge, and they keep failing to upload. Until I can figure out that problem too, you'll just have to take my word for things and I'll describe the issue to my best knowledge. Just do your best to imagine pictures, I guess
I've had this same issue for a long time now and have been looking into solutions with no luck for a couple weeks, so I figured I'd throw my hat into the ring here.

I am using an ASUS Vivobook running Windows 11 with 12 GB of RAM. I am currently on version 23H2.

Even with all non-essential and third party software closed (except my antivirus, which I cannot turn off) I use roughly 50% of my RAM. (see below screenshots)

This alone is very concerning, but on top of that I have noticed that when switching between viewing the usage as percents and values the totals don't add up to be nearly as much as I have the capacity for (as shown in screenshots below). The percents don't always add up to 100% so I assumed it just meant the percent of my total RAM, but that doesn't make sense either as you can see that Firefox is using 11.5% RAM and 556.2 MB, which doesn't quite add up. It would imply I'm either only using 4835.6 MB of space, or that that is my total available. Weirdly enough, if you look above at my first screenshots, Windows Explorer is using 107.6 MB or 9.2%, which would actually be roughly 9.2% of my total. This is one of the few times that the percent accurately reflected my total installed RAM.

The below screenshots are of my computer after a fresh restart and after disabling all non-essential startup applications (again, the only third party one is my antivirus because I can't and do not want to turn it off. That's what "Active Monitor Service" is). After a fresh restart, my total usage sticks around 30% which is considerably better, but still bad. This will also eventually go back up to 50% after some regular use, even if I close all background processes possible with task manager.

This is not just an issue while idle, I believe that this is impacting my performance while running other applications. I will notice that even my browser slows down after I've been running my computer for too long, and if I even think about booting up a slightly intensive game then my whole computer freaks out.

To wrap this up, my biggest questions are these:

1. What is causing 30-50% of my RAM to be used because I highly doubt that it's my antivirus and it's clearly not any other third party application
2. Why are the percentages off? Are they supposed to represent the percent of RAM being used or percent of installed RAM?
3. Most importantly, how can I fix this? I have tried a clean restart. I have tried scrubbing away extraneous processes. I have tried turning up and down various settings. I've attempted most of the solutions in this thread and this is where I'm at. Is there even a way to fix this?

Obviously Carlo is a paid actor

Same problem here. 41GB memory in use, BUT my user uses only 14GB.

The problem is increasing over time, I have a habit of leaving my computer in hibernation or sleep, and the system obviously has a memory leak. It was also on Windows 10, but not on a similar scale.

For those who say it's normal, no, Windows does not release this memory during heavy processes. If the memory usage reaches 100%, everything starts to lag.

Hi Guys,

I'm facing the same issue with a fresh installed Windows 11...

22GB of RAM is utilized out of 32GB on idle with all services (except for MS services) disabled and no other applications running.

As far as I can see there is no solution at this point ?

I have 8gb ram installed of which approximately 4gb are being used by unknown services in Windows11.

I could reduce the usage even further (up to 300mb less) but I still want to keep things like some animations and transparency effects (im a fancy mf) and have kept running maany optional default processes "just in case".

My ram specs are 2 sticks Ramaxel branded 4gb DDR3 1600MHz each. Additionally 12288mb maximum allocated virtual memory on SSD disk.

Again, and as mentioned by others, Windows10 did consume much less ram (like 2gb while idle and nothing open) in my case too and without any overcomplicated tweaks. Still not willing to switch back though haha

The real mystery is where all the additional memory usage going 🤔

.