0

After not restarting/fully shutting down my computer for a bit, paged pool RAM goes up to what I think are abnormally high levels. Upon restarting my computer and letting it sit for a bit without running anything, paged pool RAM seems to stabilize at around 700MB. After using my computer normally for a bit, it goes up, and as of this post it's at 3.8GB for a 16GB system (non-paged pool seems to rest at around 200MB after a fresh restart and goes up to around 600MB after normal PC usage, if that's unusual).

I've tried following the instructions here Identifying root cause of high RAM usage in Paged Pool? and it shows "Key" and "MmSt" as the biggest causes. Entering findstr /s Key *.sys results in a list of stuff so long that some of it is cut off when I scroll up. Entering findstr /s MmSt *.sys apparently results in nothing.

What's the issue here and how can I fix it? I'm pretty sure I've updated all my drivers and Windows is completely up to date as well. My computer is running Windows 10 Home OS build 19042.685

VolTorian
  • 1
  • 1
    I do not (yet) see obvious reasons for this. My X1 has been on for 24 hours since the last restart, has 3 virtual machines running and well used. Paged pool is 636 MB. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance-winpc/paged-pool-memory-increasing-over-time/53a36e46-777c-424f-bc58-dfa09f199352 – John Dec 19 '20 at 21:32
  • 2
    The issue could well be that thinking that there is a problem when there are no usage-related symptoms ;) You've paid good money for all that RAM, it would be a shame to let it go unused. – Andrew Morton Dec 19 '20 at 21:49
  • My own machine has 16 GB so that I can (and do) run virtual machines. But whatever I am doing paged pool memory stays low. That I what I am still looking for to see if I can find a reason. – John Dec 19 '20 at 21:55
  • It isn't always unused. It gets irritating when I'm trying to run something like CoD Warzone (which takes around 5-7GB) and because of the high paged pool usage I need to close other programs that I usually like to keep open. – VolTorian Dec 19 '20 at 22:01
  • One possible solution I saw was that the high page pool memory issue could be caused by a memory leak emanating from an errant application or driver or possibly malware. – John Dec 19 '20 at 22:10
  • I've done full scans with both Malwarebytes and Avast and they didn't pickup on anything. I've updated my computer and drivers. I don't know what application could be causing it, considering I just run Google Chrome and stuff like Steam and Battlenet, and the high paged pool usage persists after closing all the stuff I started. – VolTorian Dec 19 '20 at 22:38
  • I would suggest, Reboot the computer, leave it for 5 mins. Then run from an admin prompt: wpr.exe -start Pool. Leave this for 1 minute, then run: wpr.exe -stop C:\pool.etl. The hope is the driver or drivers responsible for allocating but perhaps not freeing pool memory will have "leaked". Then open the trace in Windows Performance Analyzer (SDK or Store). View the Pool graphs view and sort by the Impacting Size column, and add to the right of the pool tag column the stack column. This should help name the driver responsible for the tag and the memory. – HelpingHand Dec 19 '20 at 23:21
  • Paged pool of a quarter your total RAM size is nothing to be bothered about at all. Windows will start to page at approx 50% RAM usage, so every time you go over that it will page something. It won't bother feeing that up until it needs to. Consider it to be a high-tide marker & stop worrying about it. Of course, if you start up the machine & just stare at the page figures, very little will happen. You need to actually use it. 16GB RAM these days is not "a lot" so expect paging to always happen. – Tetsujin Dec 20 '20 at 11:56
  • Is 5.5GB paged pool concerning? – VolTorian Dec 30 '20 at 08:53
  • @Tetsujin What Windows reports as "paged pool" is kernel memory. So yeah, having paged pool usage of > 3GB is something to be concerned about. – Paul Groke Mar 31 '22 at 11:25

0 Answers0