Leaking memory

[stevedhoward]

Hi All,

HP Pavilion, 1.1G processor, 512MB RAM

My kids PC (admittedly long in the tooth) has become a garbage
dump . It has none of the things a Windows XP PC should...namely,
antivirus software or spyware detection software. I actually was very
fortunate for four or five years, and had literally no problems with
it. However, over the last three or four months, it has gotten almost
unusable. I finally got off my duff and installed antivirus and
spyware software, and as you might expect, it found a bunch. I took
all the recommendations and got rid of what was evidently some nasty
stuff, based on what I googled.

However, I still have what appears to be a pesky memory leak. As
noted, it has 512MB of RAM, and a ~900MB page file. Over a period of
about six - eight hours, the page file is slowly exhausted, and the
box becomes unresponsive. This is while running no visible users apps
(browser, Word, etc.).

I ran perfmon, removed all counters from the default, and added back a
counter for Process/Private Bytes. The committed bytes value
continues to increase towards the full page file size when the box
will lock up, but none of the processes have an increasing private
bytes counter. Windows reports the full 512MB as being available to
it.

Any insight?

Thanks!

Steve

 

[JS]

You may think you got rid of all the crap but some may still be hidden.
There are some free AV scanners and rootkit scanners out there which you can
try, but I think you should wipe the drive clean and start fresh.

JS

 

[Rock]

Hi All,

HP Pavilion, 1.1G processor, 512MB RAM

My kids PC (admittedly long in the tooth) has become a garbage
dump . It has none of the things a Windows XP PC should...namely,
antivirus software or spyware detection software. I actually was very
fortunate for four or five years, and had literally no problems with
it. However, over the last three or four months, it has gotten almost
unusable. I finally got off my duff and installed antivirus and
spyware software, and as you might expect, it found a bunch. I took
all the recommendations and got rid of what was evidently some nasty
stuff, based on what I googled.

However, I still have what appears to be a pesky memory leak. As
noted, it has 512MB of RAM, and a ~900MB page file. Over a period of
about six - eight hours, the page file is slowly exhausted, and the
box becomes unresponsive. This is while running no visible users apps
(browser, Word, etc.).

I ran perfmon, removed all counters from the default, and added back a
counter for Process/Private Bytes. The committed bytes value
continues to increase towards the full page file size when the box
will lock up, but none of the processes have an increasing private
bytes counter. Windows reports the full 512MB as being available to
it.

Start fresh with a clean install.

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

My kids PC (admittedly long in the tooth) has become a garbage
dump . It has none of the things a Windows XP PC should...namely,
antivirus software or spyware detection software. I actually was very
fortunate for four or five years, and had literally no problems with
it. However, over the last three or four months, it has gotten almost
unusable. I finally got off my duff and installed antivirus and
spyware software, and as you might expect, it found a bunch. I took
all the recommendations and got rid of what was evidently some nasty
stuff, based on what I googled.

"Cleaning a Compromised System"
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/secmgmt/sm0504.mspx

 

[stevedhoward]

"Cleaning a Compromised System"http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/secmgmt/sm0504.mspx

Wow...that's a depressing article True, but depressing...

Thanks JS, Rock, and Detlev for your input!

 

[JS]

You would be amazed at how much stuff can find it's way into your PC within
a very short period of time, especially a PC that has no protection.

Thanks and Good luck
JS

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

Wow...that's a depressing article True, but depressing...

Thanks JS, Rock, and Detlev for your input!

You're welcome!