Windows 7 Explorer Memory Issues

Currently trying to login to my main user account and getting (what appears to be) an insane memory leak.

Explorer fails to start properly, and when looking at task manager the memory being used is continuously rising and rising until I hit 99% memory usage, in which case the computer almost completely locks up and prevents me from doing anything, resulting in me performing a hard reset with the reset button.

I CANNOT re-install Windows. I have lots of data on here (and it is all still accessible), but I also still have settings and configurations for my Windows account that I really don't want to lose. Not to mention I have tons of useful programs that I can't be bothered to re-install.

I have tried a system restore and it worked for a couple of minutes until my memory started going up again.

To be clear: The computer displays a black screen with nothing on it and memory is going up rapidly (using all 8GB in a matter of 2 minutes or less). I have tracked one problem to GWX.exe, which has to do with a Windows 10 upgrade I decided not to take. The other problem is explorer.exe, which is taking up the bulk of my system resources. I have a feeling that something is stuck on there.

For even more clarification: This is ONLY happening on my main user account. My other user account(s) are fine and act completely normal, which makes me believe that it has something to do with the files or startup for that specific user account.

The only other thing that is taking up a bunch of memory is svchost using about 256 MB of memory, but that's fine.

The thing that's actually using up all of my resources is questioning. In some testing I did it has been explorer.exe but in some cases it was GWX or svchost. It's really odd and I have no idea how to fix any of this.

I am usually always able to fix it via some quick and snappy google searching but this has stumped me beyond imagination and I have to resort to asking some questions on the forums.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Hi Z609,
As the free upgrade has been pulled, you can now uninstall GWX.
reset updates to let me choose.

REBOOT

check updates

Then please follow the guidelines in the BSOD subforum, post the results.

Roy

torchwood said:

Hi Z609,
As the free upgrade has been pulled, you can now uninstall GWX.
reset updates to let me choose.

REBOOT

check updates

Then please follow the guidelines in the BSOD subforum, post the results.

Roy

I already removed GWX from System32. I'll check for updates in a minute or so. Here are some graphs:





Now, you may be wondering how I got those graphs. My method is to log in to the account that works and then switch users to the broken account. Then, I quickly switch users and take a screenshot (or in this case a picture because the PC froze after I took the screenshot) and collect data. Either way, this is a huge problem.

Hi Z609,
is your problem profile Admin or user?
If its a user we can remove it.
see screenshot, post yours please.


Roy

When logging in now, it starts explorer but doesn't show the GUI. The memory is fine. I kill that process and manually start it again and then the memory slowly goes up and up and up till I hit max. The GUI never appears.

Something his happening that's preventing the program from running efficiently and more importantly preventing me from using my computer.

No idea of the cause. I can try to do a system restore at an even EARLIER time compared to the last time I did a system restore but I highly doubt it would make much of a difference if the same problem occurred a little while after I did my last system restore.

To explain when this started happening:
Was playing GTA 5 (on my computer obviously) and exited to watch some YouTube videos on my phone. I come back and I try to go to my documents and explorer stops responding and the system freezes. Probably ran out of memory at that time. I did NOTHING that could possibly cause this issue as my computer had been working fine for the past 4 months without issue.

No idea.

torchwood said:

Hi Z609,
is your problem profile Admin or user?
If its a user we can remove it.
see screenshot, post yours please.


Roy

Here's a screenshot of the user in question in the location of regedit you requested.



FYI: I'm doing all of my posts on my other user...obviously can't access my main user without problems and computer crashing due to lack of memory.

Also forgot to mention that the last I checked the pagefile gets MASSIVE when the issues happen.

edit: Safe mode works on my main user (Albert Zeller), so I can use that to access my data if I wanted to but that's obviously not the best resolution because there's still data that's hard to transfer over.

you have 1 admin unfortunately the problem 1, and 4 other user accounts

from your edit definately looks like a driver issue post the DM log referred to in the BSOD posting instructions.
start a thread there where an expert can check it over, and x-ref this post.

Roy

torchwood said:

you have 1 admin unfortunately the problem 1, and 4 other user accounts

from your edit definately looks like a driver issue post the DM log referred to in the BSOD posting instructions.
start a thread there where an expert can check it over, and x-ref this post.

Roy

I apologize but what do you mean by DM log?

heres the link, follow the instructions

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions

Roy