Huge memory leak? Running out of ram (16 GB)

[RavinRivie]

So this problem started about two weeks ago, with nothing in particular changing. Just standard windows updates and so on. I'll try and list every single program I use when my PC is running (Looking at my notification area primarily):

EVGA Precision X
Core Temp
Xfire
Steam
Avast Antivirus
Comodo Firewall
Logitech Gaming Control Panel
Catalyst Control Center
XFastUSB
XFast LAN
Spybot S&D 2
Sticky Notes (The Windows ones - I have like 3 on my desktop)

I use chrome 99% of the time for the internet, and it uses a nice chunk of ram because I have about a dozen extensions. I can list all those if this might matter, the thing is I'll just be sitting at my PC with it open and then after awhile I get a popup usually from Chrome first that says it ran out of memory and then often Chrome just closes. Then I get a message from Windows saying I'm low on memory. If I look at my task manager and look at memory usage it's usually at something like 14.6 GB and I have 16 GB (2 x 8 GB DDR3 sticks).

I did spyware checks and virus scans and turned up nothing. I'm at an absolute loss, although I'm infuriated that this issue just won't stop occurring from some inept programmer forgetting to release the memory. CCC.exe seems to use a lot of ram sometimes, but nothing outrageous. I've even used Microsoft's Process Explorer (the one you have to download) and I don't see any one app eating tons of ram other than Chrome. Even so, Chrome in total uses maybe 2-3 GB. Every time I go to monitor the memory use it never ramps up so I just get tired of looking at it and close it. Then hours later it has ramped up insanely again and repeats.

This is bad enough in my book I'm about ready to switch OSes if this isn't resolved. Really getting tired of this game, and I'm not sure if I should be angry with Microsoft, Google, or someone else completely. As far as Chrome goes I've looked in Chrome's task manager and the highest memory use is 157,000K for the browser, my highest extensions is AdBlock Plus at 103,988K. Most extensions are around 13,000K, maybe 2-3 are in the 30-70K range.

Any suggestions on what this could be? I keep wanting to say Chrome, but I really can't switch from Chrome. Too many features I use that I don't want to give up.

 

[delellod123]

Run the bootable virus software. I fixed 2 computers with your issue just this week.

If you think this started after an update, uninstall the last update. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/troubleshoot-problems-removing-updates#1TC=windows-7

Check on this for further investigation on handles too:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/yongrhee/archive/2011/12/19/how-to-troubleshoot-a-handle-leak.aspx

 

[l3uddz]

I have been suffering from this problem too... I have 64gb of ram, so I don't often notice it until 50gb is used lol... One thing I have noticed is we both have comodo firewall... I am pretty certain comodo is the cause of this, I also see 2 chrome processes that are using 25% cpu and are unable to kill the processes (chrome is shutdown except those 2). I think it's related to flash combined with comodo. Did you ever solve this?

 

[davedowler]

So this problem started about two weeks ago, with nothing in particular changing. Just standard windows updates and so on. I'll try and list every single program I use when my PC is running (Looking at my notification area primarily):

EVGA Precision X
Core Temp
Xfire
Steam
Avast Antivirus
Comodo Firewall
Logitech Gaming Control Panel
Catalyst Control Center
XFastUSB
XFast LAN
Spybot S&D 2
Sticky Notes (The Windows ones - I have like 3 on my desktop)

I use chrome 99% of the time for the internet, and it uses a nice chunk of ram because I have about a dozen extensions. I can list all those if this might matter, the thing is I'll just be sitting at my PC with it open and then after awhile I get a popup usually from Chrome first that says it ran out of memory and then often Chrome just closes. Then I get a message from Windows saying I'm low on memory. If I look at my task manager and look at memory usage it's usually at something like 14.6 GB and I have 16 GB (2 x 8 GB DDR3 sticks).

I did spyware checks and virus scans and turned up nothing. I'm at an absolute loss, although I'm infuriated that this issue just won't stop occurring from some inept programmer forgetting to release the memory. CCC.exe seems to use a lot of ram sometimes, but nothing outrageous. I've even used Microsoft's Process Explorer (the one you have to download) and I don't see any one app eating tons of ram other than Chrome. Even so, Chrome in total uses maybe 2-3 GB. Every time I go to monitor the memory use it never ramps up so I just get tired of looking at it and close it. Then hours later it has ramped up insanely again and repeats.

This is bad enough in my book I'm about ready to switch OSes if this isn't resolved. Really getting tired of this game, and I'm not sure if I should be angry with Microsoft, Google, or someone else completely. As far as Chrome goes I've looked in Chrome's task manager and the highest memory use is 157,000K for the browser, my highest extensions is AdBlock Plus at 103,988K. Most extensions are around 13,000K, maybe 2-3 are in the 30-70K range.

Any suggestions on what this could be? I keep wanting to say Chrome, but I really can't switch from Chrome. Too many features I use that I don't want to give up.

I was having the same problem and after disabling the hardware acceleration in Google Chrome settings the memory leak completely disappeared. (This response is also posted in google forums)

To test if this fix works for you, go into
- Menu -> Settings
- Click "Show advanced settings"
- Scroll to the bottom heading were you'll see "System"
- Disable "Use hardware acceleration when available" and restart the browser.

This might not work for you.. just saying that it worked for me.

 

[Reepca]

Recently experienced something similar. On an admittedly older system running Windows XP, with only 2GB of RAM, chrome was using up ~1.4GB of RAM (task manager reported 200MB unused while running chrome, after closing chrome - which took several minutes, producing several "the program is not responding" messages - and reported something around 1.6GB of RAM unused after it fully closed). Additionally, I noted that the number of Processes listed as "chrome.exe" in task manager did not scale linearly with the number of tabs open - sometimes it would add one, sometimes it wouldn't, sometimes it would add multiple. After Google Chrome running for a long amount of time on the system, with several tabs opened and closed (at the time there were something like 12, though only one of them had video playing or anything like it), I ended up with around 24 "chrome.exe" processes running.

System is a Dell Latitude D630 (it's old) laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB DDR2 RAM running Windows XP 32-bit. I assume it's only got the basic necessity for getting information from the system to a display for graphics (it's never accelerated anything). Chrome version 37.0.2062.124 m.

Hope a solid fix is found or created.

 

[DarkEcho]

I've been having this exact same issue now for about a week. No major changes or updates, I don't even think I've done a Windows update. I've been thinking it's Chrome as well. There's a Task Manager in Chrome under tools, it will show which extensions are running etc. I wasn't able to determine anything specific there but many of the chrome.exe found in the Windows Task Manager are related to the extensions that cause the Win Task Manager so show more chrome.exe than there are tabs open. Or at least that's what I've found. There's also a setting in Chrome that allows it to run in the background. I've just disabled that along with the acceleration feature. I'll post back to see what I've found.

Win 7 64bit
8GB Ram

Never had a memory issue until just this past week and I regularly tests apps, websites etc. for work so this issue is troubling. As I said I never had this issue before and I often run multiple browsers (many tabs) all at the same time.

 

[ClwtrFL]

I've had the problem too for several months now using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit with 8GB RAM and currently Chrome (v 39.0.2171.65 m 64-bit).

I'd removed extensions and switched from Chrome 32-bit to Chrome 64-bit and nothing helped. On certain webpages memory would just get incrementally sucked up yet no other internet traffic or change in handles used was visible - the only change was in Other I/O activity when viewing Processes in Windows Task Manager. The problematic page that sucked up memory in Chrome worked perfectly in IE11.

Today I looked more closely at the memory sucking webpage and found it contained internal links to Disqus that were having trouble loading.
Those url's were:

http://referrer.disqus.com
http://disqus.com
http://a.disquscdn.com

It also had a reference to a WordPress theme (or something) that was also failing but I didn't bother with that.

To address the Disqus issue I opened my HOSTS file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts) and added the following entries for the problematic URL's (my thinking is they'd at least get positively resolved yet find nothing):

127.0.0.1 referrer.disqus.com
127.0.0.1 a.disquscdn.com
127.0.0.1 disqus.com

I then saved the file and reloaded the offending webpage (by the way, I block a lot of stuff already in the HOSTS file as I don't like ads and I am quite happy to deal with page not found issues).

After loading I again watched the memory but this time was happy to find the problem appears fixed - the memory leak seems to be gone (at least for that particular web page).

My guess is something in Chrome changed and now in certain situations (slow links? link failures?) memory leaks can occur on webpages that otherwise work fine in other browsers such as Internet Explorer or in older versions of Chrome.

My solution works for now but I'd think something in Chrome needs to be fixed.

Hopefully others will find this useful and maybe it will even shed a little light on the underlying issue with Chrome. It seems like a fair number of people are squealing over this issue and the resolution efforts they made were realistic so I'm pretty sure the problem is real. Good luck!

 

[DaSickan]

POSSIBLE FIX - WIN 7 64-bit Chrome Version 39.0.2171.71 m


As of late my experience with Chrome have been dissappointing, and all related to memory issues, I've tried almost everything I could google - to no avail.

What worked for me is the following:

(I use Kingsoft PC Doctor to monitor memory usage and such.)

By checking my scheduled startup and disabling the following update entries (all entries named/associated with chrome update or similar) I got my latest Chrome on my PC Win 7 64-bit to behave normally again.

The link is to an image on my Photobucket page that shows the instances I disabled (might be multiple ones, I disabled ALL).

http://s200.photobucket.com/user/sickanpickan/library/CHROME%20MEMORY%20ISSUE

I'm sure you don't need to use Kingsoft PC Doctor for this if you know where to disable those in windows services.
Hopefully this might help anybody else.

(edit: I should mention that I have disabled pepper flash and "hardware acceleration" in Chrome settings, but the only thing that helped was disabling the updates all over in win7 (os).)

Cheers!

 

[DarkEcho]

FIXED!!! I removed Chrome 🙁... It did end my "Out of Memory" issues. Maybe I'll reinstall and see if that helps. I realized that I hate 1 other thing with Chrome and that's how much data it saves to your C: drive. Why can't I have it store the user data on another drive? I gained back almost 2GB of data on my C: drive which I keep/use for only System programs as much as I can control it.

 

[Jschmidt27]

Shockwave flash is definitely the problem on my Win7 not releasing memory. It appears Google doesn't care. I've disabled flash but some websites require it. It is a dilemma and many people will stop using Chrome. Very disappointed in Google, but I guess a free service isn't worth supporting. There are numerous complaints on Google forums. Even occurs on a new PC using Win 8.1.

 

[jimgerlv]

I think it is a Flash player problem. I had V16 and uninstalled down to 11.8.800 and all seems ok now.

 

[Nathan A Thompson]

You could try restoring to a point before the issue. Also try running another browser. Yes I know you want chrome but for testing purposes it makes sense to eliminate chrome from the equation if it is not the culprit.

I cant help but be concerned that your OS is compromised somehow if you cant find a program hogging the RAM. Some rootkits are hard to detect. It may be worth reinstalling.

Reinstalling will not get rid of a rootkit...

 

[Wile E Coyote]

You could try restoring to a point before the issue. Also try running another browser. Yes I know you want chrome but for testing purposes it makes sense to eliminate chrome from the equation if it is not the culprit.

I cant help but be concerned that your OS is compromised somehow if you cant find a program hogging the RAM. Some rootkits are hard to detect. It may be worth reinstalling.

Reinstalling will not get rid of a rootkit...

Nathan A Thompson is incorrect.
As long as windows is fully formatted properly any virus can be removed.

I have reinstalled OS systems from windows 1.1 to windows 10. ton's of times.

Never have had root kit problem.And never had virus or malware problems.

It all depends on your internet habits.

I download that stuff just to see if my computer detection still works for fun.

Two Top things i use.malwarebytes and any anti virus programs.

I can send a list your way that are safe to use.

 

[GlazeyDays]

You could try restoring to a point before the issue. Also try running another browser. Yes I know you want chrome but for testing purposes it makes sense to eliminate chrome from the equation if it is not the culprit.

I cant help but be concerned that your OS is compromised somehow if you cant find a program hogging the RAM. Some rootkits are hard to detect. It may be worth reinstalling.

Reinstalling will not get rid of a rootkit...

Nathan A Thompson is incorrect.
As long as windows is fully formatted properly any virus can be removed.

I have reinstalled OS systems from windows 1.1 to windows 10. ton's of times.

Never have had root kit problem.And never had virus or malware problems.

It all depends on your internet habits.

I download that stuff just to see if my computer detection still works for fun.

Two Top things i use.malwarebytes and any anti virus programs.

I can send a list your way that are safe to use.

I have reinstalled OS systems from windows 1.1 to windows 10. ton's of times.
>reinstalled OS systems. | OS Systems?, Whats that, I only know OS(Operating System) there is no such thing as a OS System
>windows 1.1 to windows 10. | Windows 10?, So you were able to destroy it already?
>ton's of times. | What, 2-3 times?, Oh and nice spelling for: tons ;D
Moral of the story: Run MBAM-Chameleon, It hides itself for the malware/viruses, thus being able to detect it. even when they have a cloaking system

 

[cubanrebel]

I had the same problem 16 gb of ram going down the drain, check for virus = nothing, check for Malware = nothing then I when to resource monitor in windows and check the ram and the windows file lsass.exe was using about 13 GB when this file barely uses on my system about 30 KB. I started thinking and remember when I look in my restore points that about 2 week ago I ran windows update and the installation of the "NEW free Upgrade for Windows 10" Icon came up, I google for the KB# of this update KB 3035583 and I uninstalled and ram is back to normal, I'm now using about 3-4 GB of ram, it seem that in my case this update KB 3035583 had created a memory leak in my system.

Hope this work for you.

 

[gagam_boy123]

i Think incompatible issue with software, caused by recent windows update or software itself. remove it one by one. and reinstall it. Don't forget to reset all your browser in its default setting do not import setting from other browser. Goodluck....

 

[Sigilind]

I know this thread is really old, and I didn't read most of it, but the screenshots showing the memory usage (especially the non paged usage) reminded precisely of an issue I had. My issue was caused by Killer Network controller E2200. The non paged pool would just slowly increase over time eventually causing out of memory errors. It took a couple of hours of gaming to hit 90%+ RAM (16GB of RAM) usage, and a bit longer to hit that from web browsing etc, and it was all non paged. Updated drivers for the Killer Network E2200 fixed that and I have had no problems since. Sorry if this has already been suggested and/or tried, but I didn't bother reading most of the thread, but the problem is so similar to the one I had I thought it worth just making an account and posting this in the off chance it would be helpful. If this is actually ever read after over a year since the last post.

 

[markus.vanonen]

I know this thread is really old, and I didn't read most of it, but the screenshots showing the memory usage (especially the non paged usage) reminded precisely of an issue I had. My issue was caused by Killer Network controller E2200. The non paged pool would just slowly increase over time eventually causing out of memory errors. It took a couple of hours of gaming to hit 90%+ RAM (16GB of RAM) usage, and a bit longer to hit that from web browsing etc, and it was all non paged. Updated drivers for the Killer Network E2200 fixed that and I have had no problems since. Sorry if this has already been suggested and/or tried, but I didn't bother reading most of the thread, but the problem is so similar to the one I had I thought it worth just making an account and posting this in the off chance it would be helpful. If this is actually ever read after over a year since the last post.

Thank you so much! For weeks I've been trying to find the cause of my leak and this finally helped. I'm running Win10. Mine was Killer Network Manager MSI but I assume it's the same thing happening.

 

[brian.palicia]

I had this exact same issue at work. The problem is sticky notes. Sticky notes appears to have a massive memory leak. I began using sticky notes about a year and a half ago for notes at work and my computer began slowing down. It recently got unbelievably slow and I saw it was eating up all the memory. I shut down Sticky Notes and the problem went away.

What makes this one so difficult to diagnose is that very very few people actually use Sticky Notes, so its easy to miss.