Windows 8 Extremely High Memory Usage ~8GB!!!!!

[paul7799]

I have so far only noticed this while playing Battlefield 3, but I'm sure it will happen with all my games, I'll probably try playing Mass Effect 3 for a little while later this afternoon, but so far after playing for about 15 minutes to half an hour the game becomes VERY unresponsive, it's ALMOST like it freezes, but it's still "playable" as I have control still, but I'm getting basically like 0.015FPS. So I'm forced to CTRL + ALT + DEL to open task manager and end the process. I have noticed that when this happens, my memory usage is insane (I'll post some links to screenshots at the end of this post) so I imagine this is probably what's causing the issue. Interestingly enough, with BF3 open (not visible in screenshots) it only is using about 150MB of RAM when it crashes - perhaps I'll check the memory usage while it's actually playable and edit this post if it's any different.

I am currently running Windows 8 RTM 64-bit.

Is this perhaps just a bug? I've noticed people have had similar issues in the past on Vista and W7 (I searched for a good while) but they usually just disabled the Windows Search Service (I have done this as well, but am still having the issue) or they had far too many open services and only like 2GB of RAM.

Also worth noting is that I didn't have this issue initially (I was able to play BF3 for 2 hours straight without issues) but I have no idea what changed between then and now (I think the only thing I did was install the Witcher 2 on steam) and I'm not sure when it was last playable (although I always run Raptr while playing so maybe I can check when my last long game session of BF3 was) so I haven't tried Windows Restore yet.

Here's the screenshots:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/805/windows8highmemoryusage.png/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/99/windows8highmemoryusage.png/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/windows8highmemoryusage.png/

EDIT: Also, as you can probably imagine, a simple reboot restores my memory usage back to normal, but then I run into the same problem again when playing BF3.

 

[Idris Foughali]

Hello, I'm experiencing the same issue as well , it's now being like 5~6 months, I have a 8gb of ram, a nvidia gtx 680 and a msi z77gs65 motherboard, first I thought it was my cheap ass PSU causing instablities, So I bought a higher end one, yet the issue is still here,also it happens wether i'm playing or not, the ram just keeps increasing from 1.6gb at windows start up to 7.9 gb which makes me restart the pc right away since the whole thing just freezes.

so the question still remains, what's causing this memory leak? not sure... even on a fresh windows 8 install, the memory leak was still there ._.

 

[Anthony Ng]

Ha, I don't even play games. My computer gets sluggish when it creeps up close to 80% memory or more. The best is when I try to use a Modern UI app, it can hang the system for minutes at a time. I walk away for a coffee and come back and the system is alive again. Usually the specific app has closed too. However it still remains quite sluggish.

I run a Lenovo Helix

I7-3667U @ 2ghz
8GB ram
windows 8.1
256 SSD

I'm really struggling with this as it keeps happening at the worst times, like when I'm working. I don't think what I'm doing is more than the computer can handle

I run a 24" dell ultrasharp vis Display port. I run another 24" dell ultrasharp via USB3 and displaylink (thinkpad usb3.0 dock)
I do run hyper V on it with a machine running windows xp with 512meg ram only assigned to it.

I tend to accumulate a lot of browser windows/tabs open for both Chrome and Firefox. Lots of microsoft office.
I never had this kind of freezing issue on my older windows 7 machine with 4gb ram and ssd.

I don't find anything I do should be very taxing for this system at all.....

 

[zzxxdubs]

Thats what you get for using windows 8.....

same exact issue happens on windows 7 not isolated to windows 8 only

 

[Anthony Ng]

I pretty much solved mine... 60-64% memory usage after 48hrs and counting. Memory does release!

First I had these in my eventlog. I fixed by changing permissions in the registry for the key. Sorry I lost my exact link but lots of references to it on answers.microsoft.com

EventID 10016, DistributedCOM
The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{C2F03A33-21F5-47FA-B4BB-156362A2F239}
and APPID
{316CDED5-E4AE-4B15-9113-7055D84DCC97}
to the user NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE SID (S-1-5-19) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

I saw errors for the disk and turned of write caching on my SSD drive (device manager, right click properties of the drive). It was set to on and my drive doesn't have any cache.

I turned off defrag scheduled on the SSD drive.

I uninstalled Lenovo Autoscroll Utility which seemed to be the biggest affect in containing memory leak. The above options seemed to help my computer keep working more smoothly under high ram utilization.

 

[Peterpost]

Guys, the issue is caused by a new driver from windows 8 (ndu) i had the same issues u guys where experiencing, iff u use torrents or any other high network traffic tools your PC woud fill itself up with the memory leak eventualy giving it a forced reboot sinds essential windows parts ran out of memory.

Finally I fixed it... The problem relies on Microsoft side, with Windows Network Data Usage Monitor... Ndu driver was introduced with Windows 8 and is actually quite buggy in combination with Realtek NIC... Here's some detail:

SOLUTION:
Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver - Windows 8 Service

This service provides network data usage monitoring functionality.
This service exists in Windows 8 only.
Startup Type

Windows 8 edition without SP
Core Automatic
Professional Automatic
Enterprise Automatic
Default Properties

Display name: Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver
Service name: Ndu
Type: kernel
Path: %WinDir%\system32\drivers\Ndu.sys
Error control: normal

Default Behavior

The Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver service is a kernel mode driver. If the Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver fails to start, the error is logged. Windows 8 startup proceeds, but a message box is displayed informing you that the Ndu service has failed to start.

To Fix Memory Leaks on Non-Paged-Pool:
Changed the registry value instead of using Autoruns:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Ndu

Change the Start value to 4 (for disable).

After a lot of months looking for solutions i finally found mine and i hope others can fix their problems with this.

Thanks everyone for their help.


Sources:
http://www.eightforums.com/performance-maintenance/22022-windows-8-memory-management-leaks-5.html

 

[ronevenge]

Hi people,

For most of us, the answer is simple: uninstall intellimemory program from your pc. It is a program which consumes vast amount of RAM to start some programs faster.

It worked for me, and for couple of other people. Just try it and restart your computer. Check your ram consumption and it will dipp to around 15%.

Others who have AMD problems or other problems, if it does not work, there are couple of other ways to decrease the ram usage under advanced settings.

FYI.

 

[Patrick Chester]

Thats what you get for using windows 8.....

how bout lol i can load it but i can't play it i just need to buy some RAM how much is RAM 8GB for windows 8?

 

[Idris Foughali]

Hello again, I did manage to fix my issue but I'm not sure what really did fix it, here's what I changed, I've updated to windows 8.1, I added a 8gb memory slot, and I changed my psu to a thermaltake 750watts
I do think that my issue had something to do with my old PSU though

 

[Layarion]

Yes, AMD graphics seem to be related to the problem. I'm currently trying to reproduce the problem without starting BF3 - maybe I was running a desktop application that uses the graphics card. I'm looking into this.
I'm using the latest 12.8 Radeon driver. Obviously AMD are distributing unified Drivers for Win V/7/8 anyways.

edit: thanks for removing trolly troll

your wrong, i have Nvidia and have the same prolblem. however i don't play battlefield i play SNiper Elite v2 and EQ2. happens when i'm not playing games, i do have an i5-4690k, maybe it's intel's GPU

 

[akshayvat]

Yes, AMD graphics seem to be related to the problem. I'm currently trying to reproduce the problem without starting BF3 - maybe I was running a desktop application that uses the graphics card. I'm looking into this.
I'm using the latest 12.8 Radeon driver. Obviously AMD are distributing unified Drivers for Win V/7/8 anyways.

edit: thanks for removing trolly troll

your wrong, i have Nvidia and have the same prolblem. however i don't play battlefield i play SNiper Elite v2 and EQ2. happens when i'm not playing games, i do have an i5-4690k, maybe it's intel's GPU

hi friends I too had the same issue!!!!!! I too don't know how to solve it at first!!!!! I too tried all tips given by the members who posted their post but all didn't helped!!!!!! I found reason which caused it, it some kind of memory called modified memory which goes in hike while this problem shoots!!! while i checked my resource monitor where I found search indexer consuming more commit value so I used to end process so my problem solved for some time!!!!!! but my problem shoots up later!!!! so I just suspended the process but my computer worked imbalance so I resumed it later!!!! after restarting it my problem solved!!!! still now I didn't felt any trouble in working with my PC!!!!!!!!!
so just find which most using the commit memory and just restart it!!!!!!!!

 

[StealthNinja007]

Hey everyone,

I had this issue for a long time on my ASUS N56JR-EH with Nvidia 760M card. I fixed it by updating to BIOS 204 from the drivers page (ignore driver 201 for the N56JRH - don't worry though, the flash utility will tell you if the BIOS is compatible with your system or not. Really wish ASUS would just make a separate driver page for the N56JRH, considering it uses different drivers..) Note: you might have to power cycle your N56JR if your video driver starts crashing after the update (take out the battery and hold the power button for 60 seconds).

I had this error most often when running Sniper Elite Nazi Zombie Army and Sanctum 2. I also had pretty bad lag even when the error wasn't thrown.

I suspect this is most often a BIOS issue, and I would raise hell with your manufacturer to fix it.

MOST of the solutions here are not actual solutions - they're quick fixes to reduce the amount of RAM used by the system. However, I like to play games while running VirtualBox in the background. It's very annoying to have to save and shut down everything if I want to play a quick match.

Another reason I think this is a BIOS issue is that I used a windows utility for debugging RAM use of applications, and the utility would crash when the error was thrown. It's just a hunch, but it's hard for me to imagine something as high level as a video driver crashing a tool which is logging RAM use.

Also, I ran MEM86 tests, and they came back fine.

If a BIOS update doesn't fix it for you, then my best advice is to close all programs and disable services, as recommended here, to reduce RAM use. Also, you may be able to tweak game INI files to reduce RAM use of the game. Another suggestion is to simply disable the message.. which is harder than it sounds, and it doesn't help you if Windows closes the game automatically because of 'low ram', as happened to me.

 

[Richard van Schaijik]

For me the solution was to disable (uninstall) the Lenovo Autoscroll Service, this program leaked about 6gb of memory in 2 days time.

 

[toker509]

Hi everyone,

"
When do you experience the problem: My problem starts whenever i start the computer. my ram slowly increases to 8gb of use over several hours after bootup. i noticed it started happening right after i installed battlefield 3. maybe something is wrong with it and windows 8
"

I had the same problem.

on my case, the problem was from "Killer Network Manager" (it's a driver needed for the internet connexion).
an option was enable related to the "bandwidth control" or "application control" (it depend of the version you get of the driver) . I just disabled it. and now my RAM is OK : )

Just hope this could help you.

Thank you so much astu!!! This was my problem, I disabled "Bandwidth Control" on my Killer Network Manager, rebooted my pc and the problem has not came back. I noticed my memory kept getting out of control every time i started using my internet connection heavily, in this case it was during the downloading of steam games. My computer would eat up memory and begin to slow to a grinding halt, and for no apparent reason, Task Manager would give me no clues. As soon as you said Killer Network Manager i knew exactly what you were referring to, This is the driver software that comes with any motherboard that has a Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2201 NIC, in my situation it is for my Gigabyte G1.Sniper H6 Motherboard. This fixed my problem! Thank you!

Thanks again for all of your pointers everyone, even if it didnt solve the problem at first it really helped me pinpoint the issue. Much appreciated

SIDE NOTE: I also disabled the gigabyte Fast Boot software, as recommended by others (this program is similar to intellimem), this helped reduce my memory footprint but didnt quite eliminate the problem. The combination of both though has brought my total memory consumption down to 2gb out of 8, i am very happy with these results. I was getting 98% ram usage before.

System Specs for reference: Intel Core i5 4690k, 8gb Corsair Vengance DDR3, Nvidia Geforce GTX 970, Gigabyte G1.Sniper H6 Motherboard, Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit

 

[l0co]

Do u have Atheros Killer Network Manager? If yes i suggest to find normal driver for that card, because it's causing big memory leak.

 

[dmsims]

To use another driver for the Killer E2200

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/guide-turn-your-killer-e2200-nic-into-qualcomm-athero-ar8161.198899/

 

[jaffa248875357]

Well windows 8 was glitchy to start out with, and still is. It's probably some compatibility error that either the pc maker or microsoft (or both) haven't fixed yet. I recommend completely abandoning windows and installing ubuntu. Provided it's compatible. With my tablet, it isn't, so i'm being forced to get an hp streambook... I don't know which is worse...

 

[Vedy90]

Hello guyz.

So, I've been having the same problem, I started my PC and in half hour it skyrocketed to 7.3 gigs of RAM out of 8.
In my case it was a simple fix, cause I found the program responsible for this --> utorrent <--.
You don't need to change your torrents client, just open utorrent, go to Options -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Disk Cache -> Check the "Override automatic cache size and specify the size manually (MB)" option --> and here if you put 1/4 of your total RAM you will be just fine (in my case where I have 8 gigs i put 1024 in the box, cause it is quite enough).
Doing this might reduce your upload speed, but it will make your system a lot more stable.

ALSO ---> this method can be used on all these types of applications that allow you to manually set the disk cache.

Hope it helped!

 

[Andrius_1]

I have the same problem, and I don't even have to play any games, it happens while I'm working with photoshop, and 2-3 times a day the memory usage shoots up to ~85-90% and I'm forced to restart my computer, or leave it for about 30 minutes for it to normalize, which is extremely annoying during working hours, and causes me to lose a lot of time. If I try to restart while the memory usage is at such a high percentage, the reboot takes a very long time too.

I'm running windows 8.1,
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M,
8gb of RAM
i7-4702MQ CPU @ 2.20GHz

I also noticed that nothing in the task manager is eating up as much memory to use up such a huge percentage. And even after shutting down photoshop (which has the highest memory usage, but nowhere near 80%), it's memory usage just keeps going up even after the task has ended, for atleast 10-15minutes, and then stays at that point. And even after the memory usage percentage drops again, the photoshop memory usage stays the same... I don't get it.

 

[Baraa Dajani]

hey guys i found a method that work with my computer windows 10 64bit 8gb ram

Top 1. Registry Hack
In fact high memory usage not only occurs in Windows 10, but also happens in Window 8 and Windows 8.1. The Windows 8/8.1 registry hack can fix this high memory issue in Windows 10.
Step 1. Hit Windows Key + R Type in Regedit and then hit Enter.
Step 2. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management in the editor.
Step 3. Find ClearPageFileAtShutDown and change its value to 1.
Step 4. Restart the computer.

http://www.drivethelife.com/windows-10/fix-high-ram-cpu-memory-usage-after-windows-10-update.html