How to find what is filling up my pagefile

Question

Context: My computer runs Windows 10, and it was bought as a gaming pc. Good gpu, good cpu, 16 Gb of RAM, etc. There are two hard drives, a very small (100 Gb) SSD for the OS, plus a 3Tb HDD.

In the last few months, I've started having RAM problems. Apps would crash shortly after getting high memory usage warnings. I've suspected that one of my memory sticks was broken, corrupted, or something like that, because I was getting those warnings when the task manager said I was using around 7.9 Gb / 16 Gb. I used all the tests and diagnostics I could find, but the RAM didn't show any sign of problem. Yet, Things started crashing around half usage.

It got even worse in the last few days. I couldn't even have discord opened while playing Starcraft II, or one of them would crash with no warning.

What I've finally noticed is the committed memory usage. It was hanging around 64Gb / 64.9Gb. I knew absolutely nothing about what this even was, but it struck me as suspicious, since the number was so high.

I've started monitoring this graph with RamMap. Bullseye, several times without a doubt, something crashed as soon as it hit peak (100%), and after the crash it dropped down 1Gb or so.

But restarting the computer made no difference. Straight away on startup, I had around 61Gb / 64.9Gb of committed memory, even when normal memory usage was as low as 2Gb / 16Gb. Looking at the extra columns in details of the task manager about committed memory made no difference, it seems no process was actually using all that committed memory.

The solution I've found to the crashes, after much trial and error, was to tell my system to use no pagefile at all and restarting, which seems to have cleared the entire thing. Before that, it was set to "automatically managed by the system". Now committed memory hangs around the same amount that RAM actually uses.

But if I turn the pagefile back on, it goes back to slowly but surely growing. It seems to have grown around 5Gb already in just a few day.

So my question is: Is there a way to keep a log of what process is comitting memory then not freeing it, or is there a way, from an already filled up pagefile, to know what process is linked to what size of the pagefile?

I have a backup of the (huge) pagefile.sys file from before removing it entirely. The ideal solution would be to be able to analyze that backup file, instead of, for example, using real-time monitoring software, and letting it run for the days, weeks, or maybe even months it takes to get back to that crazy (60+ Gb) usage.

Right now, my only solution is to keep it deactivated. It really feels like a risky workaround, and not a real solution. There is still a process, or service, somewhere in my computer, that is trying to hog up the pagefile, and I'm just denying it the space to commit, instead of finding what it is and fixing it. Furthermore, I'm losing out on the entire pagefile feature because of what is probably one anonymous process containing a memory leak.

Additional weird thing: Everyone online says to use poolmon.exe, available in the Windows Driver Kit. Doesn't work for me. Installing WDK makes no difference, I can't change the install location, and the default one (C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Tools) doesn't exist (there is no "Tools" directory Inside "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\". poolmon is nowhere to be found, and even though it's supposed to work as a standalone, I can't find a download for the .exe directly anywhere for some reason. After a few tries, the WDK setup won't even start anymore, just flashes a blue square window with a toolbox-like icon in the middle of my screen, then disappears within a second and does nothing.

Solution

The pagefile may grow to large amounts. 5GB for a pagefile is pretty normal. 64GB is not however.

It is possible for a pagefile to become corrupt, and disabling then re-enabling is one of the methods to solve that problem. You did that, and what you describe now seems like normal behavior. I would therefor advise to keep the pagefile turned on and see if the problems come back.

If so, try setting them to your other drive. If that fixes things, then your harddrive may have a problem and might need to be replaced.

Comments

[psusi]

Make sure you have task manager showing you all processes, not just your own. Also check the kernel memory stats.

[Jerry Hundric]

"something crashed as soon as it hit peak (100%), and after the crash it dropped down 1Gb or so" - Since you had a crash, you should check your event logs which will tell you exactly which process crashed. Additionally, you should examine task manager, for processes that has an unusually high number of handles (and by "high", I mean on the order of tens of thousands) as some types of handles consume memory which isn't counted towards a processes memory usage.

[uDev]

Temporary try to disable the page file. For basic working, 16GB more than enough. Then start to use the pc as previously, and when some process want to use huge amount of memory, system will ask you to kill the process, and name it! So you can find out which process eat your ram. Also check the BIOS settings, because if IGP settings allocate memory, this can occur you see/can use only 7.9GB of 16GB.

[Jamie Hanrahan]

1. These are not "RAM problems". When Windows complains about "low on memory" it's complaining about committed memory, which is a type of virtual address space. 2. "is there a way, from an already filled up pagefile, to know what process is linked to what size of the pagefile?" No. 3. It's not that anything is trying to "hog the pagefile", it's using too much committed memory. The limit on committed memory is the size of RAM + the size of the pagefile, and the OS is expanding your pagefile to make room for what's being asked for (but that much is not necessarily IN the pagefile).

[Jamie Hanrahan]

4. Please post screen snaps of Task Manager, Performance tab, Memory page; and RAMmap, "Use counts". 5. After attempting the WDK install, what DO you have in Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10 ?

[psusi]

He already said the problem comes back when turning the pagefile back on.

[Kaito Kid]

@psusi It doesn come back, but slowly (I've noticed around 4-5 Gb growth between the first and the third days on system startup). Maybe this is normal, as I've mentioned, I don't know much about the pagefile (but, I know much more now than a week ago). I can try keeping it on and seering if it grows to abnormal size again or if it stops somewhere, as this answer seems to say it should.

[LPChip]

He says its growing to 5GB which is not weird. It would be weird if it grows upto 64 gigs and causes for memory problems, but I doubt that will happen. So the only thing that is important, is to find out if the crashes come back or not. A slowly growing pagefile is not strange, given that windows goes into hibernation at shutdown.

[LPChip]

Yes, just see if it comes back. I've had weird pagefile problems in the past where the file would grow to a large amount at boot due to a corrupt page file.