— paged pool / FMfn  (short evidence)
Win11 Pro 25H2  26200.9168  |  64 GB RAM  |  captured 2026-09-10

WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT
Kernel paged pool grows with file use and does not drop when apps close.
Reboot is the only reclaim. Other house PCs, same apps, stay ~450–550 MB
paged for days. This PC stairs until lockup.

ONE BOOT (10 Sep 2026, boot 12:18)
  ~12:21   paged 306 MB    FMfn 24    MmSt 45
  ~19:36   paged 676 MB    FMfn 81    MmSt 115     (apps still open)
  ~20:06   paged 912 MB    FMfn 123   MmSt 137   NtfF 120   Ntff 93
  Close apps → those tags do not come down.
  Overnight idle with wcifs off → nearly flat. Next day use → stairs again.

SAME SNAPSHOT TAGS (~8 h, 912 MB paged)
  Paged:    MmSt 137   FMfn 123   NtfF 120   Ntff 93
  Nonpaged: FMsl 52 (stream list)   File 39 (FILE_OBJECT)
  FMfn alloc/free:  1,422,272 / 1,173,287   →  ~249k outstanding name-cache nodes

MINIFILTERS (Microsoft-only on leak boots)
  bindflt, UCPD, WdFilter, CldFlt, bfs, luafv, npsvctrig, Wof, FileInfo
  No third-party filter required. Sandboxie exists on the machine; it was not loaded.

ISOLATION
  Clean install + Discord/RuneLite only     still grew
  Win11 23H2 and earlier 11 on this PC      still grew
  Defender real-time OFF                    cliffs gone, slow FMfn climb remained
  wcifs/container stack disabled at boot    overnight idle climb stopped; use-stairs remained
  Xbox gameflt removed                      no change to the pattern

DRIVER VERIFIER (pool tracking 0x8 only — do not Verifier ntoskrnl)
  fltmgr  own paged outstanding ~0.02 MB while FMfn grew tens of MB
  Ntfs    own paged +~19 MB vs total paged +~370 MB
  WdFilter own paged ~1 MB
  Allocator for FMfn is inbox Windows (ntoskrnl / Filter Manager).
  Those .sys files are not sitting on the outstanding bytes.

WPR (ETLs deleted; they were many GB)
  FMfn charged from ntoskrnl. Stacks through WdFilter / Ntfs (wcifs too, when it was loaded).
  That names who is on the allocate path. Verifier shows they don't own the leftover pool.

WHY THIS IS NOT "CACHE UNTIL PRESSURE"
  Other PCs, same apps, do not climb.
  Closing every app does not drop FMfn / FMsl / File / NtfF.
  Idle overnight is flat — already-charged bytes never come back.
  64 GB RAM: the machine locked up anyway. Reboot was still the only reclaim.