Windows running out of RAM

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Windows running out of RAM - Jan 2018

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gzt

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#1948039 29-Jan-2018 09:39

If by chance that fails to run on 10 there is a later distribution with the wdk:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/windows-driver-kit

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yitz

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#1948051 29-Jan-2018 10:17

Here's an uploaded copy of a more recent poolmon.exe standalone:

https://we.tl/DAJCxURjPF

I'd be looking into Virtualbox as a potential source too, perhaps fire up a virtual machine and run a file copy or download (some I/O intensive task) from within it to see if it affects the non-paged pool memory usage. I would check whether it is also running the latest version if you haven't done so recently.

timmmay

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#1948213 29-Jan-2018 16:42

I ran poolmon. I have absolutely no idea what the information is telling me.

I haven't used VirtualBox in weeks. Unless it's the network driver it's probably not that. I'll run it to do an update though.

yitz

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#1948232 29-Jan-2018 17:35

When your non-paged pool usage grows into the gigabytes then run poolmon.exe

From the Microsoft documentation:
Start PoolMon
If you have determined that the leak is occurring in non-paged pool, press P once;
Press B to sort the display by maximum byte use.
Take a screen shot

The above will show you the tags with the most memory usage by bytes, you are looking for tag/s consistently using the most memory contributing to large amounts of non-paged pool memory usage. The next step is to try to associate the problematic pool tag with a driver.

timmmay

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#1948259 29-Jan-2018 18:31

I can do that and post a screenshot, but can't understand it. I'm technical but I don't have that background.

timmmay

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#1956024 12-Feb-2018 21:11

I'm sitting on 10GB of memory used with no apps open. Do these screenshots (click to enlarge) tell anyone anything? poolmon hitting M to sort by memory, then P to show that screen.

mdav056

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#1956036 12-Feb-2018 21:43

Just a thought -- check the alignment on the SSDs -- I had a problem some time ago with my laptop going off and becoming totally distracted for considerable periods of time (but no error messages), and I discovered the ssd was out of alignment. Fixed with EASUS TODO.

gml

yitz

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#1956039 12-Feb-2018 21:48

Quick google seems to suggest it is related to ReFS...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/65hxf7/windows_10_creators_update_memory_leak/

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/671567b2-cd9d-4a43-b288-94c00c44c0a6/storage-spaces-memory-leak-after-creators-update

The fix seems to be to stop using it :/

To be honest I've never bothered with the feature so unable to offer any advice as to how.

timmmay

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#1956125 13-Feb-2018 08:41

Ah, that's interesting, thanks @yitz, very helpful.

I use ReFS and Storage Spaces because I had a disk problem a while back, and since they were in production W10 builds I figured they'd be good. This is the first problem I've had with them. My current workaround is to reboot every day, which isn't too bad. I do like the insurance of ReFS checksums and the RAID1 protection, and I know there are other ways to do it, but none are quite so low effort or low cost.

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