dwm.exe stopped working message every few minutes

Question

I am using Windows 7 (64 bit), and performed a spring cleanup of my machine today, after it became slower than usual, removing programs I believed were unnecessary anymore.

Since then I keep getting three "dwm.exe stopped working" messages in a row, every few minutes:

Clicking "Close program" on all three close the dialogs without further problems, but it's still quite a big nuisance.

Amazingly enough, all results I checked in Google lead to spammy products claiming this is a dangerous virus and encouraging me to buy their products.

Obviously, this is result of something I have uninstalled by accident, question is what. I remember something from NVidia, but for the life of me can't remember the exact name - I was on a roll and didn't really notice.

If it matters, I have NVidia GeForce 8400 GS, had version 314.07 when this started, and updating to the latest version did not help solving the issue.

Solution 1

Turns out this was a virus/trojan after all - CoinMiner, which was either "idle" and something I removed caused it to wake up, or some cleanup software I've installed brought it with it.

Anyhow, when I realized it might be a trojan I have installed this anti virus and it worked. (Needless to say, Windows Defender neither alerted of the trojan nor cleaned it)

Solution 2

Try a cleanup of your video card drivers, complete reinstallation, look for the cleanup tools around the web.

If you have any attached / hooked drivers to dwm form apps that style the explorer and desktop then you should temporarily disable them.

Also, try testing video memory. How can I test my GPU memory/RAM?.

Comments

[ზურა კურტანიძე]

Thanks, that's what I did at first, then realized it's actually a trojan, see my answer.

[JasonXA]

Oh, so you're running Windows without any av software installed. That's not smart at all.