Memory Leak 24H2

3.1GB RAM free now since Wednesday. Nothing in taskbar processes seems to be using alot of RAM.

Now 2.5GB free.

1.3GB free now gonna have to reboot soon.

1.2GB Free and Remote Desktop has stopped working.

banger said:

Anyone else experiencing a memory leak. I have just done an Inplace Upgrade, first Setup got stuck at 46% downloading updates so re-ran without updates and that completed successfully to 2033 then did updates. Previously after about 4 weeks uptime the Laptop (System2) would become slow and unresponsive and remote desktop wouldn't work. Only solution was a reboot couldn't pin down the leak in task manager. Laptop only has 8gb RAM so struggles.

Click to expand...

Every in-place upgrade I do stalls at 46% for ages, it always works after.

I think the Remote Desktop problem is unrelated as I have changed my router firmware and now I can ping and remote the Win 11 machine without reboot.

have you tried the registry entry to unload DLL's in post #17.

best of luck, Steve ..

XxXxX said:

have you tried the registry entry to unload DLL's in post #17.

best of luck, Steve ..

Click to expand...

I would rather not fiddle with the registry to fix a memory leak it's just finding it.

can you run msinfo32 again would like to compare
hopefully you havn't re-installed/repaired yet

have you used anything like O & O to restrict windows updates

@torchwood See attached. Page file is about 5gb also. What is O & O other than defragmentation software?

XxXxX said:
have you tried the registry entry to unload DLL's in post #17.

best of luck, Steve ..

I have created the key but the instructions just said sub-key which to me dont compute is it a Dword or Binary?

banger said:

XxXxX said:
have you tried the registry entry to unload DLL's in post #17.

best of luck, Steve ..

I have created the key but the instructions just said sub-key which to me dont compute is it a Dword or Binary?

Click to expand...

Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]

in the Window on the right created a new DWORD 32bit ...


Create a new sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

best of luck, Steve ..

That tweak does nothing. Windows will ignore it.

Still leaking memory somewhere. Only option is to do a reset. Which is taking ages. - Well reset done see how 24H2 works now on my Laptop.

Edit: Well the reset didn't work very well so fresh install and monitor. After reset couldn't install the Jan cumulative update.

banger said:

Still leaking memory somewhere. Only option is to do a reset. Which is taking ages.

Click to expand...

Start -> type Resource Monitor, and post a printscreen when your low on memory.
Also in you c:\ check how big your pagefile.sys gets. (Needs to unhide hidden files, and show system files) If you have a memory leak, that file get really big, as memory leaks are more likely to be paged to disk then in memory it self. Why do they get writen to disk? Because memory leaks are mostly leaks that by programs that are in memory and not activly used. And when there not used for a while, they will be written to disk if any other program needs memory.
edit- i now read you page file is 5gb. So there are not really big leaks.

I wonder why remote desktop disconnects. For me with 93% memory usage i can stiill use remote desktop.
Any errors you get there? Any errors in eventviewer during that time period?

Also download Rammap64 from sysinternals from microsoft, and post a screenshot from that as well.

About unloading DLL"s. DLL are loaded in standby memory, and that shows up in Taskmanager as Free memory space. -> See rammap64->standby list. So that is not included in the active memory overview in taskmanager.

banger said:

Still leaking memory somewhere. Only option is to do a reset.

Click to expand...

Have you tried a memory cleaner, there were literally designed to fix this problem.
Sometimes it is caused by a driver or DLL and it can not be fixed, only maintained.

Tester said:

Start -> type Resource Monitor, and post a printscreen when your low on memory.
Also in you c:\ check how big your pagefile.sys gets. (Needs to unhide hidden files, and show system files) If you have a memory leak, that file get really big, as memory leaks are more likely to be paged to disk then in memory it self. Why do they get writen to disk? Because memory leaks are mostly leaks that by programs that are in memory and not activly used. And when there not used for a while, they will be written to disk if any other program needs memory.
edit- i now read you page file is 5gb. So there are not really big leaks.

I wonder why remote desktop disconnects. For me with 93% memory usage i can stiill use remote desktop.
Any errors you get there? Any errors in eventviewer during that time period?

Also download Rammap64 from sysinternals from microsoft, and post a screenshot from that as well.

About unloading DLL"s. DLL are loaded in standby memory, and that shows up in Taskmanager as Free memory space. -> See rammap64->standby list. So that is not included in the active memory overview in taskmanager.

Click to expand...

I have done a fresh install and will look at RAM at the 7 day uptime mark and screen shot if necessary but I am hoping this fresh install is the cure. Only time will tell.

5 days uptime with fresh install was 50% used at boot.

That's good! Empty RAM is not doing anything. RAM is there to be used!

Is that memory use with any application opens, because then its not good, because of high memory usage. For me that system would be barly usable.
My system, 3days of use with only some applications open from taskmanager.:

However, the system uses almost all 100% of memory, all filled with standby items. This is the so called filler, free memory is there to be used. So i don't agree with Kelper, for your use case. Because you need free space, to run your apps or games, or whatever you do on the pc. As you have only +/-1190mb of free memory, that is mostly filled with the standby.
So for me 5gb is used for windows and the apps, the rest is "free" to use for new apps, games etc. But in resource manager is shows like this:

So for me when starting applications, they start from standby instead of sdd, making everything very smooth. For you, you only have 1gb of standby. If you go start some more apps, you memory usage will go over 90+%, not getting benefit anymore of the cached/standby memory. And if you open even more, then active memory in use, will be pushed to pagefile.sys, creating more pagefaults and making your pc feel slower and slower over time.
When i am working on the pc, yes my memory usage will spike to 70to 80%. If i open to much and it goes over 93% mem usage in taskmanager, it gets slow, when it hits 98% memory usage, it is barly not anymore.

How much memory usage does your explorer.exe take, don't see it in the screenshot. If your right click explorer and do a restart, does you memory usage drop? I know if you work with video's or images, explorer loads them and barly unloads the from the process. Also Intel has a memory leak in the context menu (right click), when every time you does it, it adds a few mb of memory usage to explorer.exe without unloading it. So you might want to test that as well. Removing intel from rightclick context menu will solve that issue.

Besides the possible leak, i also would suggest highly to upgrade to atleast a minimum of 16gb of memory.