I Have a Memory Leak.

Yeah, I know, that one too but I'm referring to the one in my computer.

Normally, my memory usage would go from 10-12% of 32GB to no more than 20-30% by the end of the week when I normally would do my weekly reboot. Recently, it's really gone nuts. I might get to 20-30% in as little as one day. I did my last reboot this morning at 4 AM and now—10 PM—it's already up to 25%. I installed several programs around the same time the memory use started to escalate—two gadgets, Crystal Disk Info, and the programs associated with my TV tuners (SiliconDust HDHomeRun Extend)—and activated Windows Media Center. I eliminated the two gadgets and Crystal Disk Info to see if they were the culprits (they but need to keep the TV tuners' programs (although they aren't running and haven't been run in several days) and WMC. How can I find the memory leak?

(Edit: I'm having trouble uploading some screen shots. In the time I've been fight with it—15 minutes or so, my memory use has gone up to 28%).

I keep trying to upload pictures directly with the paperclip but the blasted
thing won't let me; it keeps crashing the browser.


Good grief! When I hit the Post button the blasted picture decided to show up. I'm going to bed before I start destroying things.

LMiller7 said:

The problem is the Nonpaged pool at 3195 MB. Typically this would be less than the Paded pool, currently at 931 MB. This would usually be caused by a driver problem.

Ok, how do I go about fixing this?

Btw, when I got up at 4:30 AM, my RAM was up to 41%. I rebooted (this is getting old) and it started back up at 15%, then went to 18% when I opened four programs: MediaMonkey, Kindle for PC, Zonar Essence STX dashboard, and IE 11. It has since dropped down to 15% (it's now 5 AM). I've been running the first three all the computer runs for a couple of years without this happening.

I'm starting to think that Windows Media Center is the culprit. Yesterday, memory usage stayed fairly low until I quit checking it after the news yesterday evening and started watching some of the recordings before knocking off for the night. When I got up this morning, the usage had doubled from the last time I had checked it early yesterday evening before starting to watch the recordings.

I've eschewed watching recordings today although I've allowed WMC to continue making new ones. So far, usage seems to be pretty stable. I've been logging the usage off and on during the day (rounded off to the nearest hour):

7 AM still 15%

10 AM 15%

11 AM 16%

1 PM 16%

3 PM 16%

I'm going to continue to avoid watching recordings until tomorrow to see if the memory remains fairly stable, then I'll start watching them to see what happens to the memory usage.

Yes, I'm grasping at straws.

I have to ask. Why does it matter? If you are so concerned with your *HUGE* stockpile of RAM being used, take it out of the machine and store it some place safe. Really you are not even close to fully utilizing that stock pile. Just leave it alone and use the computer you paid so much money for.

When you get to 90% then come back and worry about. Until then follow this adive: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

logicearth said:

I have to ask. Why does it matter? If you are so concerned with your *HUGE* stockpile of RAM being used, take it out of the machine and store it some place safe. Really you are not even close to fully utilizing that stock pile. Just leave it alone and use the computer you paid so much money for.

When you get to 90% then come back and worry about. Until then follow this adive: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You don't get it. It definitely is "broke"; badly! It used to run 24/7 all week (occasionally longer) between reboots without a problem. The memory would creep up slowly from about 10% and level off around 20% or so and never go above 25-30% during the week Unless I was using some RAM intensive jobs, such as photo editing, after which the RAM usage would drop back down). Now that I have added the external TV tuners (they are received by my computer via Wi-Fi) and am using WMC to record shows (I'm still having issues with the sound being garbled on three channels only on WMC but I'll worry about that once I get this damned memory leak fixed), I can get it to go only a day or so before the usage goes out of control. I went on an overnight out of town trip a couple of weekends ago. The computer was at 30% when I left Saturday morning (the last reboot was the day before). When I got back about 5 PM Sunday afternoon, the computer was frozen at 89% with no display showing on the monitors. I had to do a cold reboot to get it back. Based on the missing TV shows that should have recorded, it froze up a little after 8AM Sunday morning. I go out of town several times a year for as much as a week or two (late last year and into early this year, I was out of town for two months) and want to be able record my TV series and some movies while I'm gone so I can catch up when I get back. So, the way the machine is currently behaving is unprecedented and is completely unacceptable.

I still haven't watched any of my recordings since I last reported so here is the latest report before I start watching some of my recorded shows:

4 PM 17%

6 PM 21% (I ran my AV and anti-malware scans so this increase is probably normal)

7 PM 19%

9 PM 19%

10 PM 20%

11 PM 19%

12 PM 20%

7 AM 20%

8 AM 20%

9 AM 20%

1 PM 21%

Re: Crystal Disk Info. How did you remove/ disable it. Did you remove the scheduled task? I'm only asking as research shows that it has suffered from memory leaks in the past.

Also take a look at RAMMap: Details are here:

Introduction to the new Sysinternals tool: RAMMap - Ask the Performance Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Have a look at the file summary tab and see if you can spot anything. I'n not sure that it will be obvious as you're not looking for extremely high memory usage.

I just noticed that you mentioned nearly 90% RAM usage! When that happens have you looked at running processes and determined what's using the most RAM?

Callender said:

Re: Crystal Disk Info. How did you remove/ disable it. Did you remove the scheduled task? I'm only asking as research shows that it has suffered from memory leaks in the past.

Also take a look at RAMMap: Details are here:

Introduction to the new Sysinternals tool: RAMMap - Ask the Performance Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Have a look at the file summary tab and see if you can spot anything. I'n not sure that it will be obvious as you're not looking for extremely high memory usage.

Thanks for your sensible, helpful response!

I had the portable (aka crapware free) version of Crystal disk so all I did was delete it. I just now did a search and found the zip folder on my versioning drive (the drive for the files and folders FreeFileSync deletes when doing a backup) so I zapped that one just in case.

I downloaded and unzipped RAM Map, then ran it but nothing jumped out at me (it doesn't help that I'm not really sure what I am looking for), including no references to Crystal disk at the upper end of the list (I didn't go through the whole thing because it was seriously long!). Keep in mind the RAM usage level has been behaving itself all day (still holding at 21% with occasional brief dips to 20%; these figures are for when IE11 is running, which adds 1%). I never did get around to watching any of my recordings and I have to knock off early tonight and get up early tomorrow morning so I might not watch anything until Saturday. I have been on the computer doing research and taking notes all afternoon, though.

I'm going to be starting my daily anti-malware in a bit and it will be curious to see what happens because, when I ran them yesterday, my RAM usage was up 2% after the dust settled.