Memory leak in explorer.exe and Brave.exe

As long as I have been using Windows 8.1, 10 and 11 my Webroot AV says explorer.exe has a possible memory leak. Is this true?
Now it also says Brave.exe has a possible memory leak.
If my computer gets sluggish I often find a restart fixes it; is this due to memory leaks? Is there a way to check apart from just looking in ResMon at the commit numbers?

The Windows debugging tools has a tool called UMDH that can help detect heap memory leaks. Since explorer and brave are written in c++ which is not a memory safe language it is certainly possible a memory leaks exists.
You can report the issue but not much also you can do save for rebooting on they're fixed.

The memory leak in explorer.exe has existed for 25 years! You'd think it could have been fixed by now.

Microsoft probably considers it a feature

Use System Informer formerly Process Hacker and you can see what is leaking as for example, Microsoft Money and Dell Fan Management both have a major Handles leak but there is no fix for it as both are abandoned projects.

Post some screenshots....

neves said:

Post some screenshots....

Click to expand...

Of what? I can't see the leak!

Almighty1 said:

Use System Informer formerly Process Hacker and you can see what is leaking as for example, Microsoft Money and Dell Fan Management both have a major Handles leak but there is no fix for it as both are abandoned projects.

Click to expand...

OK. I downloaded it. How do I use it to find a memory leak? I've enabled leakdetect and run leakdetect, but it says, " user-mode stack trace database is not enabled. Stack traces will not be displayed."

I'm installing WinDbg as I think this will allow me to run gflags and create the database. I haven't a clue what I'm doing but I can wing it!

kelper said:

Of what? I can't see the leak!

Click to expand...

Haven't used WebRoot in more than a decade, but - if it included such feature (memory leak detection) - seemed common sense to expect it - to have a log file which saves the supposed findings - or at least Live monitoring. If it only displays random messages - without any visible evidence to back it up - it's no that different than that Greek pathological liar - who keeps repeating nonsense/lies 70x times - without the slightest evidence to back it up (quite the opposite - all the evidence says the opposite of his claims).

Firefox for example - whom like chrome was known to have issues with memory leaks - included a memory monitoring and management feature (with the option to free memory). You just have to type: about:memory in the url bar -> Measure and it will display every detail related to its memory consumption (or leak - if that's the case). Chrome has a feature where each open tab shows the memory in use and the Task Manager from More Tools (same as FF). Other than that... maybe Dev Tools?!

kelper said:

OK. I downloaded it. How do I use it to find a memory leak? I've enabled leakdetect and run leakdetect, but it says, " user-mode stack trace database is not enabled. Stack traces will not be displayed."

I'm installing WinDbg as I think this will allow me to run gflags and create the database. I haven't a clue what I'm doing but I can wing it!

Click to expand...

You need to add the Handles column and then short by biggest to smallest...


There is also resmon