Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) memory leakage in Windows 10 (Version 2004).

Question

The infamous dwm.exe hogging lots of memory. FYI this is not a specific program issue. It just happens with any programs, activities randomly.

I'm getting really tired of killing dwm.exe every so often so that it will release the occupied memory. When is this going to be fixed? Is this ever going to be fixed even?

Answer 1

Hi, saw this post on the search for myself. Had the same problem. 

In case you didn't find a fix for yourself. I want to share my solution:

In my case, I updated Windows 10 to 2004 and by doing so had a driver problem with my Intel HD Graphics 630, which lead to an install of the latest version. I did that all for the new GPU scheduling feature and thought that was the problem.

After many researches on the web I found a post on Reddit, where someone commented the solution that worked for me. The Intel drivers caused a memory leak for dwm.exe. I had to uninstall it and install an older version of the drivers from early 2020.

Here to the comment on Reddit which helped me.

Answer 2

Hey guys, thanks for your inputs on this.

Unfortunately, reverting back to an older driver didn't fix my issue. So I'm just updating every once a new intel driver is available, hoping that it might fix it.

My machine has a Nividia Optimus, meaning the iGPU is always in charge of the display and dGPU does all the heavy lifting and simply adds the calculated results to the iGPU's buffer when necessary. So I'm curious if a desktop system with dGPU also experience this issue.

I've made a batch file that kills DMW.exe upon booting up the system, and interestingly I did observe a difference. When DMW.exe is newly started, sometimes I see no memory leakage at all even after using my machine for 3 to 4 hours. When I DO NOT kill the DMW.exe, there is 100% guarantee that there would be memory leakage within the first 1 hour. I've tried to look into the memory address so that I could pinpoint the trigger program / service, but to no avail.

Anyway, I've found a temporary solution. It's still a hassle but doesn't bother me as much. Not sure which party is to blame, MS or Intel but hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

Answer 3

Yes I've just seen the post and provided my dump files to the Intel moderator to forward to the debugging team for a closer look at it.

It's highly disappointing that no one official in Microsoft forums is actually responding, or at least looking at this matter.

This is not an "official Microsoft forum", it is just a user based community forum. You wont ever find anyone working for MS answering here. MS is just a trillion $ company, they cant afford support workers.

Answer 4

I finally found the thread!

This is just taken moments ago, with DWM.exe inflating to a massive 17GB. I'm also running on a gaming laptop on Windows 10 20H2, as well as Intel UHD 620 and Nvidia RTX 2080 Super Max-Q.

We are aware that the Intel graphics driver 26.20.100.7985 is the last known best working set that had no such memory leak issue. This was highlighted to Intel support but they aren't able to replicate this problem.

And I second to most affected users here, any normal activity or usage after 3-4 hours would result in a bloated memory usage by DWM, killing the process wouldn't resolve either as it usually comes back after a while.

I also found some inconsistencies with Windows shutdown and startup, where if I did a full shutdown the bloating issue is partially resolved. However, this doesn't fully solve the problem as it usually picks up after a few boot cycles.

I'd like to implore Microsoft engineers to fully investigate this and urge to collaborate with Intel to find out the root cause of the issue.

Answer 5

I reported the problem here:

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/BUG-dwm-exe-uses-memory-leakage-with-Intel-HD-Graphics-630/td-p/1222297

many have it, but Intel is unable to reproduce it, so it's up to MS :(

Until then yyou can use these temporary "fixes":

• roll back driver to 26.20.100.7985 (that is my solution and disable automatic graphic driver updates)
• restart the comouter instead using fast startup through shut-down
• restart the dwm.exe in task-manager