Mysterious Memory Leak

[Zeals]

I'm currently having an issue with my computer. Basically my computer is consuming WAY too much memory and I need to reset my computer every 8 hours or so. What happens is that over the course of 8 hours it will slowly increase the amount of memory that it is consuming until all 16 GB of memory is consumed and it forcibly resets itself because there is no working memory left. Now I'm sure as you all know, realistically under standard usage a computer shouldn't use 8 GB and run low on memory, let alone 16 GB.

 

Now I have taken a screenshot of the Task Manager as well as resource manager. Also I've copied and summed all the processes in resource manager and according to Excel with all the programs running it is using 5.2 GB of RAM max, far short of the 11.4 GB it is supposedly using. 

 

So I was wondering if you guys have any ideas on what is causing this and how to prevent it or fix it. What is evident that it isn't any actual program that's running that is consuming all the memory. 

 

Here are my current computer specifications in case you need this information:

CPU: FX-8350

Cooler: Corsair H105

Motherboard: ASRock 990FX K1LLER

RAM: G.Skill Trident-X 2x8 GB 1600 MHz CL 7-8-8-24

SSD: SanDisk Extreme II 480 GB

HDD: Seagate 4 TB Barracuda

GPU: XFX R9 290

Soundcard: ASUS Xonar Essence STX 

PSU: Corsair AX760

 

 

 

 

[Godlygamer23]

What programs are running in the background?

[Zeals]

What programs are running in the background?

At the time of the screenshot: Steam, Xonar Essence STX, AMD Gaming Evolved (Raptr), Killer Ethernet Networking, MSI Afterburner, VLC, Microsoft Skydrive and Corsair Utility Engine. 

[Krzyimprt]

At the time of the screenshot: Steam, Xonar Essence STX, AMD Gaming Evolved (Raptr), Killer Ethernet Networking, MSI Afterburner, VLC, Microsoft Skydrive and Corsair Utility Engine. 

Clearly something is up. Did you try doing a virus scan along with malwarebytes?

[Zeals]

Clearly something is up. Did you try doing a virus scan along with malwarebytes?

Yep, both churned out nothing. 

[Godlygamer23]

Sometimes programs will not "tell" you that they're consuming loads of memory. Example: Years ago, I had a laptop with only 1GB of RAM. This program consumed all of it and pulled my computer down to a crawl. Finally getting Task Manager to open resulted in me scratching my head. Task Manager displayed nothing unusual in the Processes. I closed off that program I mentioned(I don't remember the name), and a lot of memory was cleared. What I'm saying is disable some of those programs to see how memory usage is affected.

[Mojo-Jojo]

Something in driver/kernel space. Try uninstalling your AV first, then look at drivers.

 

EDIT: You can use poolmon to check which driver has so much space allocated. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/177415

[Zeals]

Something in driver/kernel space. Try uninstalling your AV first, then look at drivers.

So uninstall AV then uninstall and reinstall all drivers? Okay I'll do that now and see how it goes. 

[Mojo-Jojo]

So uninstall AV then uninstall and reinstall all drivers? Okay I'll do that now and see how it goes. 

I was too late with my edit: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/177415 is an article about Poolmon; it allows you to identify what causes the high memory usage within the driver pool.

[Zeals]

I was too late with my edit: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/177415 is an article about Poolmon; it allows you to identify what causes the high memory usage within the driver pool.

I should probably mention I'm currently running Windows 8.1 Professional. 

[Majestic]

Update driver to latest, from website, for this; 

1. Qualcomm^® Atheros^® Killer™ E2200 Series Gigabit LAN

 

Most likely the culprit, as it has been causing memory leaks on several occasions.

EU link; ftp://europe.asrock.com/drivers/All/AppCharger/AppCharger(v1.0.6).zip

US link; http://66.226.78.22/downloadsite/drivers/All/AppCharger/AppCharger(v1.0.6).zip
 

[Mojo-Jojo]

I should probably mention I'm currently running Windows 8.1 Professional. 

Then the pooltagging steps aren't necessary, but poolmon works on any version of Widows as far is I know.

Here's a linky to get the Windows Driver Kit that contain Poolmon: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42273

 

Open a CMD and punch in these two commands:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Tools\x64"Poolmon /p

Then press B - it sorts from high to low, counting the size in bytes of the memory usage in the pool.

 

 

For the (top entry, but there might be multiple) big entries, get the tag (For example, my highest entry is NDbf.) and locate the actual driver name. Punch these two in another CMD prompt(Replacing NDbf with your tag):

cd C:\windows\system32\driversfindstr /m /l NDbf *.sys

results in "SamsungRapidDiskFltr.sys" for me. This makes sense since Samsung's RAPID mode is enabled and caches stuff into my RAM.

 

 

The installation is big so I'd try updating the network drivers like suggested above before doing this, because it usually is the network drivers.

[Zeals]

Update driver to latest, from website, for this; 

1. Qualcomm^® Atheros^® Killer™ E2200 Series Gigabit LAN

 

Most likely the culprit, as it has been causing memory leaks on several occasions.

EU link; ftp://europe.asrock.com/drivers/All/AppCharger/AppCharger(v1.0.6).zip

US link; http://66.226.78.22/downloadsite/drivers/All/AppCharger/AppCharger(v1.0.6).zip

 

You seemed to have fixed the problem good sir. Although I had to use the driver straight from Qualcomm not the one on the ASRock site to fix it. 

[STRMfrmXMN]

You seemed to have fixed the problem good sir. Although I had to use the driver straight from Qualcomm not the one on the ASRock site to fix it. 

If you wouldn't mind, could you mark the thread solved? You can do so by finding the comment that solved your problem and marking "solved" on the right.

 

Thanks!