How to stop explorer.exe from using large RAM space

Phil Culverhouse 0 Reputation points
2023-03-16T12:43:31.58+00:00

We have a high speed camera saving small images (mostly <32KB) to disk at a rate of 166 per second for 24 hours or longer. We have a test program that replicates the camera output for testing. Both cause problems in recent tests with WIN11 and WIN10.

Under win10 and win11 I've noticed that something in the OS is using large amounts of RAM, even though I've turned off file indexing (Windows Search service) and stopped anti-virus checks of the folders being written to.

I can write 70,000 images in 10 minutes and consume many GB of file space in an hour or so. Yet, the OS grinds to a halt with something consuming large amount of RAM (12GB in 4 hours) of a 32GB system. It not our software leaking, but appears to be Explorer.exe and/or SearchApp.exe.

I have tried turning off SearchApp.exe (by stopping the process and renaming quickly) and then rebooting. But this changes nothing. So it appears it might be something in Explorer. exe. (using this advice: How do you disable SearchApp.exe from running so that you can enable - Microsoft Community)

We don't get the same problem in Ubuntu with the same code (excepting OS related calls specific to OS).

We are running on a newly installed computer (12th gen Intel motherboard) and I suspect, from reading elsewhere, that its a memory leak in the system.

I see on this forum suggestions to remove KB4598242. But this is a new system install. Does it have accumulative updates? And surely removing one will cause other issues not be resolved anymore once the update is removed.

Any one any ideas what to do? We are considering writing files to ZIP files, this reducing the OS burden. But this is a work-around.

Phil

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  1. Limitless Technology 16,666 Reputation points
    2023-03-17T16:23:28.2566667+00:00

    Hello

    Thank you for your question and reaching out. I can understand you are having query\issues related to RAM usage.

    1. Please check Memory part of Performance tab of Task manager and RamMap window -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap
    2. Disable any Antivirus program or Windows firewall you may have for temporary purpose.
    3. Try to upgrade RAM and increase Pagefile size.
    4. Disable any other Non-Microsoft windows programs from Start-> Run -> msconfig -> Services -> Click Hide all Microsoft services.
    5. Perform full disk scan using command : chkdsk /f /r <DriveLetter>

    --If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--