1

I have this issue where my PC's RAM completely fills up over the course of a few hours. I know that memory usage in itself is not bad, however, it has grown to the point that it makes the PC slow and unable. I have 12 GB of ram and typically, the RAM usage will go up to 11.5 GB causing this huge slowdown. I do have the page file enabled on system managed.

I found this application called RamMap from Sysinternals that shows the RAM usage and I find that choosing empty Modified Page List multiple times will clear the RAM back down to 6.5 GB usage. This makes the computer usable again, but what is causing the modified page list to take up all my memory?

I'm running Windows 7 and RamMap is shown below. This is a screenshot after clearing the modified page file.

RamMap

ayao1337
  • 926
  • 2
  • 11
  • 20
  • You likely have a driver that is leaking memory. Verify the problem does not happen while running in Safe Mode. – Ramhound Sep 09 '16 at 00:54
  • Install the WPT (part of Win10 1511 SDK: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=698771 which also works for Win7), open a CMD.exe as admin, run this command wpr.exe -start ReferenceSet -filemode && timeout -1 && wpr.exe -stop C:\HighMemoryUsage.etl, wait 10 seconds, press a key to stop logging. Zip the large ETL file (+ NGENPDB folder) into 1 zip, upload the zip (OneDrive, dropbox, google drive) and post the share link here. – magicandre1981 Sep 09 '16 at 04:24
  • And please re-shoot the screen shot, this time including the entirety of the "modified" column. – Jamie Hanrahan Sep 09 '16 at 19:33
  • Thanks. I'm assuming for the information requested, you would like it when the memory usage is high? I've just restarted the computer to help get it working again so it might take a few hours for it to go up again. – ayao1337 Sep 09 '16 at 23:13
  • @magicandre1981 I can't seem to get wpr to work. It returns the system cannot find the file specified. Error code:0x8007002. I tried googling it but couldn't find anything relating to wpr? – ayao1337 Sep 09 '16 at 23:19
  • replace ReferenceSet with ResidentSet – magicandre1981 Sep 10 '16 at 05:23
  • I got the files along with a larger screenshot of rammap on onedrive here. – ayao1337 Sep 10 '16 at 16:38

1 Answers1

2

According to the picture

enter image description here

the memory usage of modified is only 77MB and the data from the ETL

enter image description here

the memory usage of modified is only 60 MB, which is low.

The real usage comes from the PageTable, which is over 2GB, but I see no related process (UNKNOWN (-1)):

enter image description here

Here some 3rd party tools cuase the leak. 1 knwon tool is Lenovo "RapidBoot Shield", but you use a Dell laptop. Stop several tools until you can isolate which tool causes it.

Community
  • 1
magicandre1981
  • 98,168
  • 30
  • 181
  • 248
  • What do you mean by "dell tool"? Any idea what this may be? I also noticed that, after running the empty commands in rammap, the memory usage drops from 10 to 6.5 gb used but rammap doesn't show the page table usage dropping. I linked a picture here – ayao1337 Sep 11 '16 at 16:29
  • page table can't be reduced by any tools. stop programs until you found the one that causes it – magicandre1981 Sep 12 '16 at 04:13
  • 1
    I've killed almost all of the programs that I can think of, but the ram usage won't go down. Is there any other way to find what is causing this issue? – ayao1337 Sep 13 '16 at 01:26
  • in msconfig there is option "Diagnostic Startup" which only loads the minimal services/drivers that Windows needs to boot. http://www.ghacks.net/2011/05/04/the-benefits-of-windows-diagnostic-startup-mode/ do this and look if you still have the issue – magicandre1981 Sep 13 '16 at 04:26
  • any update on this? have you found which tool causes it? – magicandre1981 Sep 16 '16 at 15:16
  • No, I honestly don't have any clue on what to do or how to diagnose this. I will try diagnostic startup, but even if it doesn't happen then, how will I find the tool causing it? – ayao1337 Sep 17 '16 at 18:01
  • you can only find it by stopping all 3rd party tools (50:50 rule, stopping half, look if still happens, stop again 50% pf the remaining tools and so on) until you found which tool causes it – magicandre1981 Sep 17 '16 at 18:09
  • I've tried diagnostic startup and the ram usage was fine. Now I guess its time to do what you suggested and do 50/50. This might take a while. – ayao1337 Sep 25 '16 at 15:35
  • Yes but this is the only way to find the cause – magicandre1981 Sep 25 '16 at 18:16
  • any update? have you found the causing tool? – magicandre1981 Oct 02 '16 at 20:54
  • Yes, I think I'm getting very close. Currently, I've stopped the issue-causing program from msconfig. Ram has been fine for the past few days. I will just slowly enable programs until the issue appears again. It will just take a little more testing to figure out the culprit. – ayao1337 Oct 03 '16 at 00:55
  • any update on your issue? – magicandre1981 Dec 03 '16 at 20:04
  • What ended up happening was that I just left whatever I had stopped as is in msconfig and forgot about it. The problem just disappeared. – ayao1337 Jan 09 '17 at 17:21
  • and which processes have you disabled? – magicandre1981 Jan 09 '17 at 17:23
  • AcroTray, Acronis Scheduler 2 Service, adm_tray.exe, Acrobat Syncronizer, Adobe Creative Cloud, Fitbit Connect, Skype, Java Auto Updater, and MagicDisc – ayao1337 Jan 09 '17 at 17:30
  • maybe it is MagicDisc when you mount a ISO – magicandre1981 Jan 09 '17 at 17:32
  • Hmm. I just started it and mounted an ISO but there is no difference in ram usage? I'm just so glad this issue disappeared. I just always run into the most random issues. – ayao1337 Jan 09 '17 at 17:36
  • hm, it is difficult to tell which software causes high pagetable usage. if it is fine now,enjoy it. – magicandre1981 Jan 10 '17 at 16:02
  • I'm not sure either. Thanks for your help along the way though. Really appreciated. – ayao1337 Jan 13 '17 at 02:14
  • ok, if you think my reply answered/helped you, mark it is answer to "close" the question. http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5235 – magicandre1981 Jan 13 '17 at 16:00