[Tech] Windows 7 memory leak

[DocBot]

Hello you tech savvy people!

Since I only know soft stuff like bodies and psyches nowadays, i need your help

The last few days I've been having a memory leak. Comp chugs to a standstill after x hours.

I haven't installed anything new. It's not a program that I can see in task manager or resource manager. It's not an svchost (as far as I can see).

Now I'm dling windows debugging tools and I feel I'm out of my league.

Any help on what to do next would be appreciated.

 

[thatbloke]

What leads you to assume it's a memory leak?

If you get task manager up when it's happening, you can go to the process list and order by memory usage - do you see anything suspect in there causing the problem?

 

[PsiSoldier]

how much memory does your system have?

 

[DocBot]

I assume it's a memory leak because my ram usage gets up to 97% or so before the box becomes unresponsive. I left it on when I went to bed 8-9 hrs ago, then it was at somewhere around 50% usage. Now it's at 78%, I have choppy mouse movement and stuttering sound.

And as I said, it's not a program or process I can see in task/resource manager. A rough estimate of the processes there gives a total usage of less than 400 mb.

I have 2 gig ram. (which isn't really up to par nowadays, I know. Still, it was fine up until a few days ago).

 

[elDiablo]

Are you displaying processes from all users? It's a little tick box in the bottom left of the processes tab in the Task Manager. Windows 7 has it unticked by default.

 

[DocBot]

yes I am.

 

[DocBot]

I really think it's up to the point where I have to use the symbols stuff in process explorer and poolmon etc to figure out what this is. But I hope I'm wrong. Because when we start talking about paged/nonpaged memory etc, I really feel I'm out of my comfort zone.

 

[SwampFae]

[Response]: Windows 7 memory leak

Hmm. If you do not already have it installed, I would recommend SpyBOT S&D just in case there may be something messing with your system.

Another good app is TuneUp Utilities 2008.

These two have helped me a LOT.

 

[[THN]Buffalo_Hunter]

I'd recommend Malwarebytes over Spybot - it seems to find things Spybot misses.

 

[DocBot]

Yeah, I'll go and check that. I don't think it will find much, though.

A bit of googling reveals that there are a fair few people having the same problem, although no straight answers have been forthcoming afaik. There's a chance it can be the nvidia drivers, but I've had them since I installed win7 and the issue is more recent than that. The only people who seem to have managed to solve this problem are the ones who have used the WDK/poolmon thingie, and as I said that's where my competence ends as it stands right now. So, anyone have any experience with WDK/poolmon/procExp? Want to share? (if I'm not mistaken, I should be able to find/rule out malware as a reason through those resources as well)

 

[thatbloke]

if you go to the "performance" tab in the task manager, you should then see a button called "resource manager" (or something similar...) at the bottom, this contains alot more detail about processes and disk usage, and may hold some information showing what's up.

I have no experience with WDK or poolmon, but i have used procexp before...

 

[DocBot]

It's not a program that I can see in task manager or resource manager. It's not an svchost (as far as I can see).

Moving on, I bought more RAM today, another 4 gig (ddr2, 6400/800, CL5). Installed it, and lo and behold, the box wouldn't even start. So I removed the old sticks and we'll see how it goes.

 

[DocBot]

No malware. Double the RAM only means it takes longer for the stuttering / choppy mouse to set in.

 

[Iron_fist]

am i right in thinking you're using an SSD?, if so how much free space is there on it? and have you tried moving the page file off the SSD to a normal drive? also i know there are a fair few SSD that have firmware updates, so that would also be worth checking.

 

[DocBot]

SSD has 15 gig free. I would have thought it to be a good thing to have the page file on the faster drive?

 

[Kasatka]

Page file on faster drive makes sense, but it also makes sense to have it on a drive with more % free and that doesn't constantly get I/O'ed.

 

[thatbloke]

SSD has 15 gig free. I would have thought it to be a good thing to have the page file on the faster drive?

We're just suggesting to test it

The other thing you can try is disabling the pagefile altogether (I have it disabled with 8GB RAM), with 4GB of RAM you should just about get away with it unless you start running multiple games at once...

 

[DocBot]

And, er, how would that make my problem with diminishing free RAM over time go away?

 

[Iron_fist]

the problem with SSD is that as they get filled performance decreases due to the fact that it operates differently to a normal drive
see here for a pretty good explanation and the possible cause of the problem as pagefiles make lots of writes to the drive with a low amount of space left.

another issue i have seen is that firefox with firebug running on google/#ig causes ridiculous memory usage (2GB+) and performance issues