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Did not notice this issue after upgrading to Windows 11 a couple of months back, but recently my RAM was 99% used several times and remained at 99% used even after closing all running programs other than background apps. Needless to say, computer became unresponsive and I had to reboot to return RAM usage back to normal.

Here is the Task Manager screenshot:

Task Manager

I opened up the Resource Monitor and none of the running tasks were using inordinate amount of memory:

Resource Monitor

I fired up Sysinternals Process Explorer and it did not provide any additional clues:

Process Explorer

Process Explorer Sys Info provided more details than Resource Monitor but still nothing gave me a clue what exactly is happening here and what is taking up all that memory:

enter image description here

Any idea how to figure out what exactly is eating up all that RAM when this happens next time?

  • Windows 11 Version 21H2 (OS Build 22000.469)
  • MSI MEG X570 Unify with latest BIOS and AMD ComboAm4v2PI 1.2.0.5
  • 32 GB of RAM
Dean Kuga
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  • Use MS Config to start with selective / minimal startup. Restart and then start adding your regular apps to see what is causing the issue. It is not a Windows 11 issue (two Windows 11 machines here). You may need to Repair Windows 11. – John Feb 08 '22 at 00:05
  • Your running some applications that is not only requesting memory to be used, but keeping it, leaving your system with virtually no memory. Are you running a VM of any type by chance? The only thing it might be is a memory leak within a driver. That’s where using minimal startup will come in handy – Ramhound Feb 08 '22 at 00:21
  • @Ramhound No VM used... if some app is keeping RAM in use why is that not visible in the list of processes neither in Task Manager or Process Explorer? – Dean Kuga Feb 08 '22 at 00:23
  • That is why I suggest minimal boot and adding apps to see what is happening. It all the memory is used with minimal apps, then time to repair or even reinstall Windows. – John Feb 08 '22 at 00:33
  • @Ramhound The problem is that I have no reliable way of reproducing this. It happens once in a while regardless of what programs are running... – Dean Kuga Feb 08 '22 at 01:21
  • [You will have to use poolmon to diagnose a memory leak.](https://superuser.com/questions/949244/windows-10-high-memory-usage-unknown-reason/949246#949246). I would say the conclusion to that possible duplicate applies to your case given your using 30 GB of non-paged RAM – Ramhound Feb 08 '22 at 01:36
  • no ....way of reproducing this. It happens once in a while regardless of what programs are running... .... If if does not matter what is running, you should strongly consider backing up and reinstalling Windows.' – John Feb 08 '22 at 02:11
  • @John - And if I it’s a driver to blame, they will just install the same drivers, and have the same problem on a clean install of Windows – Ramhound Feb 08 '22 at 02:34
  • Possible about a driver, but a new install with no apps should not use memory like this. Unless the machine has faulty drivers as you suggest. I actually have not seen a faulty driver issue like this. – John Feb 08 '22 at 02:36
  • A WHQL signed driver so abhorrent that it eats up 30+ GB of ram is highly HIGHLY unlikely but the fact that it isn't showing up in the process list is indeed a puzzler. – Señor CMasMas Feb 08 '22 at 13:59
  • On Windows 10, I've found Wagnardsoft's *Intelligent standby list cleaner*, https://www.wagnardsoft.com/ISLCw , helpful with memory-intensive tasks, such as processing many files in Calibre at once, though it was originally developed to improve RAM issues in games. It's free and worth a try -- hopefully it's a workaround. – DrMoishe Pippik Feb 08 '22 at 18:52

1 Answers1

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I believe I just caught the culprit and it is PowerToys Always On Top feature. I noticed my computer was slow and opened the Task Manager to find PowerToysAlwaysOnTop process using some CPU time and although the memory used was displayed as 1 MB as soon as I killed it my memory used dropped from 98% to 18%.

I disabled that feature of PowerToys and will update this reply if memory leak happens again while the feature is disabled.

enter image description here

Dean Kuga
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