High Memory \ Memory Leak - Large Pool and Non-Paged Pool

Question

I've been chasing one of the strangest issues i've ever personally dealt with on my computer. As you can maybe guess from the title, I believe i've got a nasty memory leak. This issue has been haunting me for months, and I wouldn't post here if I wasn't desperate for assistance! I'm normally pretty good about figuring them out on my own.

How Do I Notice the Issue?

My system will start crawling in terms of performance. Apps Lag, audio will cut in and out. I'll open task manager, and I will see it. My memory Utilization will typically be around 90% - 95% steady, and the Paged Pool will be 40GB+ and Non Paged around 5 - 10 GB, maybe more.

What have I tried?

Multiple clean installs: Win 11 (23H2/24H2/25H2) and Win 10 22H2. Installed very min amount of programs.

I read a lot about nVidia Drivers, so I used the Safe Mode DDU to install ONLY the very basic driver, with nothing else fancy \ nVidia utilities included

A few suggestions on drivers, so I rolled back my Network Drivers too, and tried generic RealTek drivers

Gone into the Windows Event Traces, clicked Properties, there are options to control buffer sizes and flush times, turned those way down (but reasonable I think)

What I can't really Try: The issue is a bit random. For example, after a clean install of Windows (currently on 10 pro ).. I went over 3 weeks without the issue happening. So, I can't really keep my PC in safemode and try and see if it happens or not..

Where I'm at currently \ Need Help: I've used Poolmon and performance Monitor to see the problem is helping, and getting the Tags. Which based on research says the tag is caused by " Event Traces", but I can't for the life of me figure out , well what is causing the run away trace? What driver or "thing " is causing this to happen? I've tried going in and stopping slowly some of the traces running, but it never really shrinks. I can't catch it in the act of it slowly growing. It just comes on like a light switch, probably cause I just don't notice in time while its growing until RAM almost out. So, I'll kill traces one at a time, don't really notice anything, unless I reboot of course. Then, we're clean until the next time it happens.

Attaching some screenshots for reference. The Task Manager and Poolmon screenshot were at different times, so expect they are diff values. But, this is the type of data I see...

All I want for Christmas, is this problem.... to go away : ) And all you friends to be happy and healthy. Cheers all.

Answer 1

Seems the debugger is needed to track such behavior.

Did you try solutions suggested in the topic mentioned above?

Answer 2

OK, I'll wait.

Answer 3

Please check if the problem exists during clean boot and in the safe mode.

https://support.microsoft.com/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

https://support.microsoft.com/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-10-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234

Tell the result.

Answer 4

Please see https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/askperf/an-introduction-to-pool-tags/372983

Open C:\Windows\system32\drivers folder at a command prompt and then run the findstr /m /l <tag>*.sys command.

Check a solution suggested at [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/answers/questions/4444349/windows-11-severe-memory-leak-in-nonpaged-pool-(ta](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/answers/questions/4444349/windows-11-severe-memory-leak-in-nonpaged-pool-(ta)

Answer 5

Hi,

what exactly tags are memory "eating"? Did you search drivers for these tags?

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