I have an unsolvable problem. Mem Leak \ Page Pools

I've been through the ringer for months, reading documentation, forums, asking for help. I've never been able to solve it. I even turned to Ai for just a glimmer of hope.

Windows 11 paged pool never comes back down. Only a reboot frees it.

Task Manager → Memory → Paged pool. After reboot it's 300 MB. If I use the PC it jumps in stairs and sticks. Last measured boot: 300 MB in the morning, 900+ MB by evening. Close Discord, RuneLite, Firefox, Explorer — the number does not drop. Leave it long enough and the box runs out of memory and locks up. This is kernel paged pool, not Chrome.

Two other PCs in the house do the same kind of work (Discord / RuneLite / Firefox). They sit at 450–550 MB paged for days, sometimes a month. Same apps. Dont understand why..

Pool tags that grow and never free: FMfn, MmSt, NtfF/Ntff (paged). FMsl and File stay up on the nonpaged side. One snapshot at 8 hours: FMfn 123 MB with ~249k outstanding name-cache nodes (1.42M allocs vs 1.17M frees). fltmc is Microsoft-only (WdFilter, FileInfo, CldFlt, bindflt, bfs, …). No third-party minifilter required.

Already ruled out:
- Clean install with only Discord + RuneLite — still grew
- Windows 11 23H2 and earlier 11 on this same PC — still grew
- Defender real-time off — the huge scan spikes stopped, the slow climb did not
- wcifs disabled at boot — overnight idle went flat; daytime use still stairs
- Driver Verifier pool tracking on fltmgr, Ntfs, WdFilter: those .sys files' own paged bytes barely moved while FMfn grew tens of MB

So this is Filter Manager's filename cache / NTFS stream objects not getting torn down. Not "WdFilter leaking 200 MB of its own pool." Idle does not free it. Closing files does not free it. Reboot does.

I don't want to "reboot more" or "it's a cache until memory pressure." Pressure happened. The session still died. Other house PCs with the same apps never do this.

Put some extra details in a text doc, not sure if it helps. I'm so beyond my skillset at this point.

I don't know if PoolMon is still around, but it used to be part of the Windows Driver Kit...

You might also look into Sysinternals RamMap...might save you some reboots until resolved.

The "Empty Standby List" function brings it down some...

I have used the PoolMon, RampMap sounds new to me. Surprised I never came across that. Let me look into that, thanks! If anyone else has ideas, please please share. lol

Personally, I have no idea how to tell you to troubleshoot this, but I did have co-pilot analyze your thread and it's response was lengthy, eventually pointing to storage controller drivers, chipset drivers, sata/ahci controller drivers, uefi bios, and disk errors. Whether co-pilot is correct in its assessment, I can not say.

Since you currently have no other viable direction to go, it might be worth pursuing the direction co-pilot leads you.
If you are interested, while this thread is open in Edge, open co-pilot in upper right corner. In the message box, enter
"can you analyze this thread?"
Read the entire lengthy answer co-pilot gives you and interact with the questions co-pilot asks you.

three settings i use to help with the page file

as stated it clears the page file completely at restart/shutdown

#####
this helps by using the RAM for your GPU instead of paging it out

https://www.lifewire.com/increase-vram-on-a-windows-pc-5072150

i have mine set to 1024 decimal

#####
this is an old one but still seems to work with non-microsoft software and programs

and this is how i have my page file set up



you can also use 'Custom size' depending on the amount of RAM you have installed
but i leave it on 'System managed' and it very often now stays at Zero use of page file
but then again i also have 64GB of DDR4 Ram installed

hopefully this maybe of some help
best of luck Steve ..

glasskuter said:

Personally, I have no idea how to tell you to troubleshoot this, but I did have co-pilot analyze your thread and it's response was lengthy, eventually pointing to storage controller drivers, chipset drivers, sata/ahci controller drivers, uefi bios, and disk errors. Whether co-pilot is correct in its assessment, I can not say.

Click to expand...

I didn't know what "paged pool" is until I searched for it just now (Google's IA):

A paged pool is a region of virtual memory used by the Windows operating system kernel and device drivers that can be temporarily swapped out (paged) to the hard drive's page file when not actively needed. [1, 2]

How It Works

• • Kernel Allocations: Used for short-term, small memory needs by the operating system and drivers (similar to application heaps). [1, 2]
  • Pageability: Unlike the non-paged pool (which must stay permanently pinned in physical RAM), data in the paged pool can move freely between RAM and storage to free up physical memory. [1, 2]
  • Normal Sizes: On modern systems, a normal paged pool size frequently ranges up to a few gigabytes depending on workload and installed RAM. [1]

Troubleshooting High Usage

• 
  
• • Memory Leaks: If the paged pool climbs continuously without dropping, a faulty device driver or background service is likely failing to release allocated memory.
  • Tools: You can inspect specific kernel pool allocations using diagnostic utilities like Microsoft's PoolMon tool. [1]

Click to expand...

• As the problem happens in clean installs too, I think it should be a driver of a hardware part. As co-pilot has led to the same conclusion likely in a different way, I've quoted the glasskuter's paragraph.

I just copied you first post and pasted it into ChatGPT. Here are its responses.



Can you read the first one and then open the second one and supply the info it requests. If it won't let you 4spond use my example to ask ChatGPT yourself.

Good luck.

You said "Clean install with only Discord + RuneLite — still grew"

Why not try a clean install without Discord and RuneLite? Surely that should be your first step?

Go to Task Manager>Startup Apps and disable all non Microsoft apps from Auto Starting.
Power off shutdown and restart.
See if that has any positive effect.

have you tried to change what is pooled?

How to Change a Website’s Application Pool in IIS​

You can change a website’s application pool in IIS either through the IIS Manager GUI or via PowerShell. The change will affect how the site’s worker process runs, so it’s important to test after making the change.

JLArranz said:

As the problem happens in clean installs too, I think it should be a driver of a hardware part.

Click to expand...

Sometimes the issue can be fixed by updating a driver or software, if not, you can only deal with it by clearing the memory.

You can use System Informer as a quick fix or Memory Cleaner for a regular cleanup.

I ended up getting a reply from Microsoft, that it's a Kernel problem, and there is no fix at this time. :\ it really was unsolvable I guess lol... I've never tried Linux, probably won't. Thats annoying to hear.