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BUG: dwm.exe uses memory leakage with Intel HD Graphics 630

Cody
New Contributor I
512,467 Views

Hi,

dwm.exe (Desktop-Window Manager) uses high memory with Intel Intel HD Graphics 630. This problem has been reported before:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/desktop-windows-manager-dwm-memory-leakage-in/c2968fb0-ee26-4483-9f08-dfa19149cd24

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/iqttw5/windows_10_dwmexe_high_ram_usage/g4umzyn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

Here's a screenshot of my dwm ram usage after 2 hours (1.6 GB):
Image1.jpg

 

Please, this bug is already known for 3-4 months, and I do not want to reinstall a 2019 driver...

1 Solution
Gabriela_Intel
Moderator
316,322 Views

It seems that everyone has posted positive results so far about beta driver 101.1121 resolving this dwm leak issue. I'm going ahead and marking this thread as resolved! Please note that we'll specifically call out this fix in the release notes of our next production driver release to the Download Center which will be found here once available.

 

Special thanks to @HKlum@TurboTacho@Ansuel, and the MANY others that dedicated their time testing and providing various dump files. I really appreciate you all sticking by our side after all this time to make sure this long-standing problem gets resolved. You folks are what make this Community forum so great. We couldn't have done it without you! 😊

 

For those of you that continue to exhibit issues: Please create new individual threads so we can assess if it is a separate issue or not for your particular case.

 

Thanks again everyone!!

View solution in original post

612 Replies
HKlum
Valued Contributor I
12,268 Views

I'm back to driver version 7985 for now, lets see if that helps anything...

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MrX1980
New Contributor I
11,431 Views

I have a little hope. So far, the 30.0.100.9559 driver seems to be better. I still sometimes see peaks up to 500MB, but they also automatically return to normal (<100MB).

My dump files was not yet downloaded by Intel.

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Stefan3D
Honored Contributor II
12,464 Views

NVIDIA is fooling around with a registry patch related to DWM

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm]
"OverlayTestMode"=dword:00000005

Might be worth to try if that has an impact on Intel GPUs as well.

Also: what's up with that blacklist (Intel = 8086)?

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm]
"ShaderLinkingGPUBlacklist"="8086:08C* 8086:0BE* 8086:258* 8086:259* 8086:277* 8086:278* 8086:279* 8086:27A* 8086:29B* 8086:29C* 8086:29D* 8086:2E5* 8086:410* 8086:810* 8086:A00* 8086:A01*"

 

HKlum
Valued Contributor I
12,360 Views

@Stefan3D Well that's interesting. I said in a previous post on here, that I also have the issue since a few months, that when I play a video in Chrome, and then click around the mouse to change focus of Chrome windows and/or resize Chrome windows, there is a little chance of all windows go "black" or actually vanish for a small time around 100ms or so, that would be what you call "flicker" I guess. So that might be the issue Nvidia is also describing there.

I googled about OverlayTestMode and found this post in a guru3d forum related to Nvidia:

"However, I enabled the OverlayTestMode 5 fix people are talking about in this thread and the crashes after sleep are gone with the 460.61 drivers now."

So maybe it also might crash internally on Intel when triggering sleep or hibernate and causing a memory leak?

@MrX1980 what is driver 30.0.100.9507 you were talking about? Is that a special driver for 21H1 I guess not compatible with 20H2? Because it seems to be WDDM 3.0.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/126790/Intel-UHD-Graphics-630

says latest is 27.20.100.9316 and I also dont see a beta driver there.

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MrX1980
New Contributor I
11,787 Views

@HKlum Yes, these are WDDM 3.0 drivers and are coming (only) via Windows Update if you are using the Windows Insider Developer Channel.
NVIDIA has also a download location for those upcoming drivers here: CUDA on WSL | NVIDIA Developer
(registered users only, but its free to register)

Hint:
The first two numbers of the driver version indicates the WDDM version. (valid only for new drivers around 2021)
v27.... = WDDM 2.7
v30... = WDDM 3.0

As far as I know WDDM 3.0 has (only) some improvements for WSL2. I currently don't use WSL2.

Currently dwm.exe stays under 100MB, but I don't want to be happy too soon.

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HKlum
Valued Contributor I
11,347 Views

So I have tested 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm] "OverlayTestMode"=dword:00000005

it has no impact on the memory leak, as I am typing right now, dwm.exe is exploding watching a video with 2mb/s again.

But it seems to fix the flicker issue I was having too since a few months.

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TurboTacho
New Contributor II
11,298 Views

Hi @RonaldM_Intel ,

I thank you for your priority attention on the memory leak issue caused by DWM. Pardon me for lack of updates in here, as I haven't been visiting at the forum for quite a while. Some of us have posted this issue on Microsoft forums, and unfortunately no official staff or moderator were able to respond to the issues faced by many users, or to at least caught their attention at it.

Putting aside my technical grievances, as per your instructions I have managed to downgrade my Intel GPU driver to 27.20.100.8587 and retrieved several dump files at different timestamps to roughly gauge the memory leak.

The memory leak files have been uploaded to my Google Drive here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZT0pqbe4Nc0o5OsTExNDdtNjBz8ZyCdP?usp=sharing

The files are marked with date and timestamp (YYYYMMDD_HHmm) respectively. Starting with the  following dump file sizes:

  • 251MB file (right off booting into Windows 10),
  • 0.97GB (switched off and rebooted later in the day + 2 hours usage),
  • 2.28GB (put to sleep mode for the afternoon + 2 hours usage),
  • 10.2GB (after third dump file + 4-6 hours of casual gaming)

I hope these dump files would enable your debugging team a deeper look at the issue, as well as lending on your team's expertise on resolving the memory leak issue.

Understandbly, the recommendation still stands, but we as consumers feel that we shouldn't be stuck in a ping-pong or limbo situation since Microsoft isn't moving at all despite our reports being sent to them.

Once again, I enourmously appreciate your continued effort reporting and tracking this issue in the internal bug database.

 

Best regards

TurboTacho

amd64_CometLake
Beginner
12,522 Views

Since the issue only occurs on driver versions 27.XX.XXXX and higher, I'd assume it's something to do with the WDDM 2.7, which makes sense as it was implemented early 2020.

Siyi
Beginner
12,019 Views

I had the same issue here with windows 2004, CPU I7-9700K with UHD 630 and no dedicated card. dwm.exe used to ate up 20GB of my 64GB memory after hoours to days of using, which was serious while I am working in memory-intense environment. Can confirm the problem disappeared after downgrading to 10. 26.20.100.7985. Hope Intel won't remove this version of drive from the website before this issue is fixed.

gain
Novice
14,076 Views

windows10 20H2.19042
Intel 10400 UHD 630 driver 27.20.100.8783 & 9079 & 9126 & 9168 memory leak.
There will be no memory leak in DWM-1, but it will start leaking after DWM-2.
Now using 27.20.100.9168.
Hope it helps you test!

My driver is lower than 27.20.100.8681, windows10 will force automatic update.
Hope Intel/Microsoft will solve it soon.

geminis3
Novice
13,932 Views

Just signed up to tell 29.20.100.XXXX drivers don't have the memory leak, after using my laptop for 8 hours my dwm.exe usage is between 80-100mb which is nothing compared to 4-6GB it used to be on previous versions.

I got this driver from some forum and the version number is 29.20.100.9116 btw I always have fast startup turned off cause I dual/triple boot other OSes on this machine.

geminis3
Novice
13,887 Views

After using Zoom screensharing recently the leak started to appear again

geminis3_0-1611609601514.png

 

Stefan3D
Honored Contributor II
13,661 Views

@geminis3 

Try 29.20.100.9263

@Cody 

Unfortunately 21H1 = 19043.x - i am afraid the major Windows update will come as 21H2

MagicallyDelicious
13,652 Views

Just made my account to say that this is happening to me too. It often occurs after about 8 hours of use. I found that putting it to sleep fixes the leak, though I think temporarily.

MagicallyDelicious
13,566 Views

I might have found the solution, but this is just five or so minutes after making this discovery so it may need a trial before I can confirm.

Turn off Fast Start Up, since it seems that when I reset it, it just goes to normal but if I shut it down and turn it on with Fast Start Up on, for some reason DWM is a little more bloated. Turning off Fast Start Up will make it more akin to "resetting".

MagicallyDelicious
13,294 Views

New potential workaround: Sign out of your account and sign back in. It resets DWN.exe.

MonkeyDMax92
Beginner
13,753 Views

Same problem with my computer: ASUS ROG STRIX G17 G712LV-H7002T

- All my drivers are up to date

- The computer behaves normally after restarting

 

Cody
New Contributor I
13,665 Views

@RonaldM_Intel 

estimating the reports and views in this thread, it seems like a LOT of people have this bug, and it is unfortunate that you cannot reproduce it. From my experience as programmer, I know that bugs that cannot be reproduced are not fixable.

 

I have 2 suggestions how to solve this problem

#1: another user (MrX1980) posted in this thread that this problem might be fixed with windows dev build 21292, so we can delegate it to MS and hopefully they provide a fix in 21H1.

#2: what I personally would prefer is that we find out which change in your code caused the issue. I tested all public available drivers and found that the last version without this bug is 27.20.100.8476-  as soon I update to the next release 27.20.100.8587 the bug occured. With a simple logarithmic search we can find the culprit version update if you are able to provide intermediate releases. But I of course do not know your company policies, like whether these are e.g., confident.

My idea is that if you provide me 27.20.100.8525, and this one bugs, I continue with 8550, if works, I test 8500 afterwards. If 8500 bugs I will test 8488. It will take maybe log2(100) = 7 tests this way to find the buggy update.

If you know the exact version, you could check the documented logs and maybe find something obvious or simply reverse the changes.

I'd be happy to help here if I can 😉

 

parameter
Beginner
13,365 Views

Energy management. screen off: never. no memory leak. ( Dwm.exe)

gain
Novice
12,889 Views

Now using 27.20.100.8681 will not memory leak, may be the last version without memory leak?

27.20.100.8681 is also the automatic update version of windows10

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ogsdu
Beginner
12,374 Views

Hi! I had this issue with the latest driver as for 2/14/2021. That one was 27.20.100.9168 . Memory usage just kept increasing little by little. I downgrade it to 27.20.100.9079 and it seems fix for now. I will report anything here. 

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