I'm having a persistent issue with a memory leak on my Windows 11 machine. I have 32GB of RAM and whenever I leave my computer on for an extended period, even with no applications running, my RAM usage starts to climb steadily. I've been checking Task Manager, and it shows that the paged pool is not decreasing; instead, it's increasing, sometimes reaching 3 to 4GB. I used Poolmon to investigate further but I'm confused about the "Key" pool tag it shows. I've searched the System32drivers directory using the findstr command and ended up with a long, unhelpful list of .sys files. My computer has a Ryzen CPU and an older Radeon RX 580 GPU. Initially, I thought this was a driver-related kernel-mode memory leak, so I reinstalled my GPU drivers, but that didn't seem to help. I even wonder if malware could be involved, but I'm not sure. I feel a bit lost here, so any insight would be great. Also, I found that the AMD User Experience Program (AUEPMaster.exe) was the main issue, bloating the handle count and affecting the paged pool. Disabling it seems to resolve the problem now.
4 Answers
Just a heads-up: if you suspect malware, running a thorough scan could help. It’s always good to ensure your system's clean!
Does the paged pool grow until it consumes all your memory? If it’s using 4GB out of 32GB, that’s typically not alarming, unless it flatlines your system's performance. Using RAMMap could give you insights on memory usage.
You should check the Handles column in the Task Manager's details section. If something has an unusually high number of handles, that could be the culprit.
That's exactly what I found! Once I disabled that, the paged pool stopped growing. Thanks for the tip!
The Key tag relates to registry actions. A driver, program, or background service might be accessing registry elements without closing them. Check RAMMap and look at the Processes tab for paged pool usage. If it’s a kernel process, you might need to update or uninstall drivers or even consider a clean OS reinstall.
I noticed that the AMD User Experience Program has a continuously growing number of handles! Disabling it might solve the issue.