Constant Memory Leak Issues in Windows, Intel to blame?

I don’t know if anyone else has been experiencing memory leaks in the Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) and the Antimalware Service Executable (MsMpEng.exe) in Windows, but it has been plaguing me for months now.

I have issues on Windows 10 and Windows 11. All the web search shows I should update my Intel graphics drivers, which I do, but the issue persists. I am seeing it on Surface Laptop 3, Surface Go 2, and my work Dell Precision 5520.

Anyone else having similar issues? Any AMD users seeing this or not seeing this?

 

Conversation 7 comments

  • dftf

    27 April, 2022 - 11:10 am

    <p>If you use <em>Resource Monitor </em>and click the <em>Disk</em> tab you can then click on an individual process (in the "Processes with Disk Activity" headed area) and below it will show you the files that process is accessing (or you could use <em>ProcMon</em>, though it’s clearly more-complex to use). Maybe you could narrow-down a particular file that is constantly being accessed, and then check the properties for that file to get an idea what it relates to (maybe an anti-cheat or anti-piracy component)?</p>

    • thejoefin

      Premium Member
      28 April, 2022 - 11:26 am

      <p>I had used Resource Monitor a little, but using it like this to track file usage is pretty cool! Great tip! Unfortunately it didn’t show me anything with regards to MsMpEng.exe or dwm.exe yet. Just shows that they are taking a ton of ram… but I’ll use this to keep an eye on what could be making stuff sluggish for sure.</p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    27 April, 2022 - 11:14 am

    <p>I had problems with dwm crashing, but that turned out to be faulty hardware. It was on a Surface Laptop Studio that I had Microsoft replace.</p>

    • thejoefin

      Premium Member
      28 April, 2022 - 11:16 am

      <p>Never expected this to potentially be related to some hardware issue. I haven’t had this problem forever, so I assumed it was a bug introduced by an update.</p>

      • dftf

        28 April, 2022 - 4:06 pm

        <p>It would be unlikely to be a hardware issue as (1) I cannot imagine each of those three devices uses the same Intel CPU, or the integrated GPU on each is the exact-same and (2) it would be odd for <em>three separate devices</em> to all develop a similar hardware-issue at the exact same time!</p><p><br></p><p>However, Intel do have a tool you can install to test your CPU here:</p><p><strong>intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/15951/intel-processor-diagnostic-tool.html</strong></p>

  • bluvg

    27 April, 2022 - 7:16 pm

    <p>Not sure if this is the culprit, but the just-released April non-security preview release ("C") lists this "improvement" (not the first word that comes to mind to describe this, but anyhow…):</p><p><br></p><ul><li>Addresses a memory leak issue that affects Windows systems that are in use 24 hours each day of the week.</li></ul><p><br></p>

    • thejoefin

      Premium Member
      28 April, 2022 - 11:15 am

      <p>I will install that patch and see if it helps, thanks for the tip!</p>

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