WinXP memory leak - virutual memory full warnings.

orion456 · Nov 28, 2014

Recently I have noticed that all my winxp machines are suffering from gigabytes of memory leak. With a fresh boot, my memory use is around 600MB but over the following week that will slowly sneak up to 3.5GB, even when all user applications have been closed.

At first I thought it was FireFox causing the problem but it is also happening on a winxp box that does nothing but run BOINC. Eventually I get a message from winxp that my virtual memory had to be increased and when I look, almost the entire memory is full. I have tried closing every program running under msconfig including those under the system heading that lists non-MS programs. This has definitely slowed the leak but it continues to fill memory.

Is there any way to monitor memory requests and clear the memory say from every app in the last 3 hours?

Anyone else notice they are getting virtual memory full warnings?

Mr.Scott · Nov 28, 2014

Check for malware.
I got no memory leaks on any of my XP boxes.

orion456 · Nov 28, 2014

Mr.Scott said:
Check for malware.
I got no memory leaks on any of my XP boxes.

6 different machines, the only thing they have in common, besides winxp, is AVG. Otherwise they are running BOINC, F@H, and custom software. All of them can't have the same malware. Some of them have been running for years without change except winxp updates and AVG updates.

Have you actually looked at the memory usage using TaskManager? Not all my machines give a warning on memory, they just slowly fill up over the space of a week or so.

Mr.Scott · Nov 28, 2014

6 different machines, the only thing they have in common, besides winxp, is AVG. Otherwise they are running BOINC, F@H, and custom software. All of them can't have the same malware. Some of them have been running for years without change except winxp updates and AVG updates.

Have you actually looked at the memory usage using TaskManager?

Of course. It couldn't be any of your machines.

My daily is on XP, just like all the others. Here's my task manager. It's on your end.

RollingThunder · Nov 28, 2014

orion456 said:
Recently I have noticed that all my winxp machines are suffering from gigabytes of memory leak. With a fresh boot, my memory use is around 600MB but over the following week that will slowly sneak up to 3.5GB, even when all user applications have been closed.

At first I thought it was FireFox causing the problem but it is also happening on a winxp box that does nothing but run BOINC. Eventually I get a message from winxp that my virtual memory had to be increased and when I look, almost the entire memory is full. I have tried closing every program running under msconfig including those under the system heading that lists non-MS programs. This has definitely slowed the leak but it continues to fill memory.

Is there any way to monitor memory requests and clear the memory say from every app in the last 3 hours?

Anyone else notice they are getting virtual memory full warnings?

Orion,

Sounds like a trojan infection.

Go here and install this program from Malwarebytes. Reboot into safe mode and run it and let us know if it finds anything.
It's still beta but was fine using Vista64.

https://www.malwarebytes.org/antirootkit/

BobbyBubblehead · Nov 28, 2014

ooh, I`ll try that one too. I fired up some tiny dubious program earlier and noticed it wrote a web exclusion in malwarebytes. :sly:

rootkit scanner no5 for me. pup`s `n pum`s my favourite pet programs

orion456 · Nov 28, 2014

Mr.Scott said:
Of course. It couldn't be any of your machines.

Well one or two maybe, but six? All running on different networks and most never used except for M$ updates and dedicated apps, not likely all of them could be infected by the same nasty. I think it has to be a winxp problem, or an AVG problem.

Speaking of which, you have the smallest memory footprint I have ever seen on winxp. 123MB barely loads the operating system!!

Mr.Scott · Nov 28, 2014

orion456 said:
Well one or two maybe, but six? All running on different networks and most never used except for M$ updates and dedicated apps, not likely all of them could be infected by the same nasty. I think it has to be a winxp problem, or an AVG problem.

Speaking of which, you have the smallest memory footprint I have ever seen on winxp. 123MB barely loads the operating system!!

Thank you. It's a self lightened version. I have lighter than that for benching purposes. Somewhere in the 50MB range.

My daily is fully updated and I have no leak you speak of. I suspect AVG then. Have you checked for malware yet? Malware can be spread via a flash drive also.

BobbyBubblehead · Nov 28, 2014

have you had a look in event viewer to see what programs have used the most memory?

set the virtual memory manually?

cleared up temp files?

just a few suggestions

orion456 · Nov 28, 2014

RollingThunder said:
Orion,

Sounds like a trojan infection.

Ok I ran the scan and it only found adware.minibug and Adware.180Solutions both of which are minor ad targetting infections. Nonetheless they have been removed. Lets see what happens.

Mr.Scott · Nov 28, 2014

I would run TDSS Killer also.

BobbyBubblehead · Nov 28, 2014

Adware.180Solutions is a particular nasty piece of kit. identity theft being the main concern.

check the programs have been removed and not running in the background :-

zango.exe
zango.exe
SBTV.exe

and these registry keys don't exist anymore :-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMICROSOFTWINDOWSCURRENTVERSIONRUN zango
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN\ zango

c627627 · Nov 28, 2014

orion456 said:
Is there any way to monitor memory requests and clear the memory say from every app in the last 3 hours?

A program installed on your system, not found on our WinXP installs is doing that. You can watch it waste your RAM using MemInfo:
http://www.carthagosoft.net/Downloads.php

orion456 · Dec 4, 2014

W$ has issued a fix for a memory leak that occurs in WinXP SP3. This appears to show up with extended network send request.

"A memory leak problem occurs when you run an application that uses the HttpSendRequest function of the WinHTTP API or of the WinINet API to send Secure Sockets Layer requests in Windows XP Service Pack 3"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959658

This fix has partly solved my problem, but not completely. I am slowly eliminating items from msconfig to see if that ends the problem completely.

WinXP memory leak - virutual memory full warnings.

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