4

I'm using Windows 10 Pro version 1703 build 15063.296 in Bootcamp on a Macbook Pro '15. This setup has been running fine for two years until the last big Windows 10 update. Now I'm constantly getting out of memory errors. The laptop has 16GB of RAM which is never close to full. The committed memory though is maxing out. When I check to see what program is using a high amount of committed memory in Resource Monitor, everything is pretty low, usually less than 500MB. Windows will say Firefox or Chrome is using too much memory, but I can't find any evidence of this with Task Manager, Resource Monitor or Process Explorer.

How can I find what is actually using up all the committed memory and crashing my computer?

Here are some screenshots of the process list while the commit charge is extremely high. I had to close Chrome and Slack just to free up enough memory to take a screenshot. Resource Monitor Process List

Committed Memory

powerCLIRules
  • 41
  • 1
  • 1
  • 3
  • @Ramhound Not a duplicate as far as we can see here - high CPU usage" is not the same as "high committed memory". – Jamie Hanrahan May 19 '17 at 22:29
  • @powerCLIRules Can you post the Task Manager Performance tab, Memory pane? – Jamie Hanrahan May 19 '17 at 22:31
  • But the answer can help you identify a driver memory leak.... – Ramhound May 19 '17 at 23:15
  • https://superuser.com/questions/674649/windows-using-too-much-ram-how-to-diagnose-resource-hog – Ramhound May 19 '17 at 23:16
  • post pictures of Taskmgr->Perf->Memory – magicandre1981 May 20 '17 at 06:50
  • @Ramhound and if you'd linked to that question instead of the one you linked first I wouldn't have objected. – Jamie Hanrahan May 20 '17 at 09:11
  • How does one object to a suggestion? – Ramhound May 20 '17 at 15:14
  • 2
    By pointing out that this question asks about high "committed memory" while the supposed duplicate asks about high "CPU usage" in the system process. "committed memory" and "CPU usage" are very different resources and the analysis methods are different. A system can show high committed memory usage without showing _any_ CPU usage. – Jamie Hanrahan May 20 '17 at 21:18
  • @JamieHanrahan I updated the post with some screenshots of what I'm seeing. Thanks! – powerCLIRules May 22 '17 at 15:51
  • I found the offending process, it is splwow64.exe which is the print spooler in Windows 10. When my committed memory gets really high, I can kill this process and the memory goes way down, usually under 4GB. I still have yet to find any program (poolmon, process explorer, rammon, task manager, resource monitor, etc) that actually shows the the memory usage. The only thing that looks strange was the paged pool usage was higher than any other program, but still only about 50MB. – powerCLIRules May 22 '17 at 20:44
  • Task Manager should show it as "Commit size". There are other things, though, that add to the system-wide commit charge: Page file-backed mapped memory; copy-on-write regiions of mapped memory; the virtual sizes of both paged and nonpaged pool; kernel stacks; page tables; space for page tables for v.a.s. that is defined but not yet referenced; and AWE allocations. (From _Windows Internals_ by Solomon, Russinovich, and Ionescu) RAMmap (from the sysinternals tools) can help identify some of these usages. – Jamie Hanrahan May 23 '17 at 11:15
  • Possible Duplicate: https://superuser.com/questions/949244/windows-10-high-memory-usage-unknown-reason?rq=1 – Ramhound May 23 '17 at 18:55
  • No, not a duplicate there either. The NP pool in this question is a completely reasonable amount while in your "possible duplicate" it is much too high and is the reason for the excessive use of both commit charge and of RAM. n.b.: Not all questions tagged "memory" are duplicates of each other! Nor even all that involve committed memory on WIndows. – Jamie Hanrahan May 23 '17 at 19:55
  • It's not just Epson. I can confirm the same issue with HP Office-jet 4632. Killing spoolsv.exe that starts up splwow64.exe and then killing splwow64.exe solved (temporary, until i need to print something) the problem. – salexaa Jun 22 '17 at 14:00

1 Answers1

0

I was going nuts because process explorer etc not really showing what the issue was. eventually tracked it to splwow64.exe. memory consumption being 3GB, commit being 12GB... kill the splwow64.exe and commit goes down to 3.2GB

came across this thread https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/53cff103-b339-4806-993c-11141e677e10/very-high-memory-commit-charge-after-windows-10-creators-update?forum=win10itprohardware

I also have epson printer driver, so i'm guessing it's Epson+CreatorsUpdate=commit without release for some reason.

TheGeezer
  • 11
  • 1
    If that thread contains the answer, please copy the relevant portions here as the answer so that if the link goes dead this answer will still be valid. – music2myear Jun 22 '17 at 16:26