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Windows 10, Memory leaks, solved, Alienware 17-R3
Not specifically an Alienware problem as such, but there may be others here with exactly the same configuration as my system, who experience the same problem, and this might help.
17R3, late 2015, 970m, 256SSD/1TBHDD i7-6700HQ, 16GB
Last weekend I spent some time sorting out a problem I've been experiencing for the past few weeks, which might possibly be related to the latest Windows 10 update, or not.
I've been getting increasingly frequent warnings that Windows was running low on memory, and programs (usually whatever I was using at the time) needed to be closed or information would be lost; I also experienced a few random freezes and restarts related to this. High memory use was not shown in Task Manager, or XTU; everything appeared normal. Diagnostics showed no problems, and benchmarks seemed normal.
To track this down, I enabled "Commit Size" as a column in Task Manager details tab, then looked for processes with high commit sizes, or things out of the ordinary.
Found that after a reboot, Service Host: Local System had high (commit) memory use; when I sighted it, about 400MB and steadily climbing. Since my uptimes are up to a week (if I'm lucky), this can grow to alarming sizes, almost unnoticed.
Windows event log showed events for Resource-Exhaustion-Detector, which indicated that it had detected high memory use by 3 processes; the highest of which was svchost.exe, which was using about 20GB of memory.
Since svchost launches about 15 or so services, I had to systematically look at each service, to see if it was necessary, and what happened if I stopped or disabled it. There's a few unnecessary services running by default; turns out that IPHelper was the service with the memory leak. It isn't essential, so I stopped and disabled it, had no problems since.
Now, that instance of svchost has private memory use of about 17MB, and commit memory use of about 30MB, and it seems very steady. System is smoother and more responsive.
I hope this helps anybody who has a similar problem,
I find this kind if messing around really frustrating and a waste of time - at least I'm competent enough to fix it myself. How often would somebody have to call tech support, or pay somebody to fix this. Most computer users I know would not know where to start.
I also wonder if the Dell warranty covers on site support to clean the leaked memory out of the bottom of the laptop casing, I don't want it clogging up the vents and causing cooling issues.
Maybe Dell could supply me with 32GB of RAM to replace the memory that leaked? Now that would be a nice gesture.
hindesite
276 Posts
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November 24th, 2016 13:00
Not seeing how this is relevant or even good advice.
ViliVilperi
1 Message
0
January 16th, 2017 03:00
Hello. I have this same issue that iphelper is using huge amount of memory and increasing all time. BUT im not using alienware. I have acer predator with same components that u got. My question is, how u disable it ? I find out how to stop it but every time i restart it will open again and i need to stop it again.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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17K Posts
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January 16th, 2017 11:00
Thanks for posting.
I think this is a welcome change:
Windows 10 build 14942 splits up service hosts
techreport.com/.../windows-10-build-14942-splits-up-service-hosts
Also ...
I've found that even on systems with a lot of memory, I do NOT disable the virtual memory paging file. Systems seem to work with System Managed, but I prefer Custom on C: SSD. Either way, I just recommend still using one.
BrattGuy
2 Posts
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January 23rd, 2017 13:00
I want to say that the humor is appreciated with me. Thank you for it. I just purchased an Alienware 17 R4 with the 3x display and GTX 1070 GPU. This is a great Laptop with so much potential. Seeing how I have only had this system just over a month now and paid a big chunk of coins for this was expecting to not be having similar issues you had had with your device.
1. Dell put in a 128 hard drive was hoping I was getting the 250 memory hard drive for windows 10 operating system. I've been hit with some difficulties trying to work around the small OS (C:) hard drive and a 1 TB slower hard drive(D:). I have set my system up to place the bulk of data on the larger hard drive, and thought I had set it up to place all win store apps on the D: for data Drive yet it seems that windows does not want to do this and is constantly trying to fill up the C drive with these store Apps. Since I've made this change using the win store settings I've found that the same service host file is using sometimes 67% of my 16 GBs of Dramm. I purchased Graes of war 4 xbox anywhere (?I think that's its name) I wanted to get the disk but seems disk are mostly for console systems not PC. The download of that software the first and only time I've experienced the 3 week task of downloading 90+ GBs (felt like I was back in the 90's)
1a. Windows store downloaded about 30 GBs of the software in packages and then stopped with a critical error saying I ran out of resources and it was unable to complete the download. I experienced this endless loop 3-4 times till I found out that I needed to change where windows 10 stored the apps on my computer.
This was when I found out I needed to change the Storage device in Settings-System- Storage from C: to D:. I thought that I had found the solution and I did. I was able to download the entire Gears of War 4 software and was able to do it while visiting my Mothers for Christmas. Was quite happy to find that her internet was far faster than mine and got the entire program in 2 days not weeks. All was well n good till the game needed an update package to run come Jan 11th. I've been trying to figure out why Win Store is wanting to use the C drive for the update software. Now I am back to where I was before....
2. Dell and Alienware must be aware of this issue and if not than I hope people find out about this before they buy a system with a small OS drive. There are work rounds that I am finding where you can set your drives up to act as one hard drive yet that looks like it might lead to losing the advantages of having a faster drive for the OS. I've not done this for I think I'll have to reinstall the entire system. These issues would be nice to be aware of before investing so much of my money and time on a new computer. A note by the sales person to ask how a person would like the drives to be set up be a welcomed part of the sales process. The reason I did not go out and build my own computer laptop is so I would not have to deal with these type of issues and am quite disappointed that they have not been looked at and addressed by both Dell and windows when recommending such setups. Is that not what they are selling a product that will work in good order from out of the box?
3. I know that the Alienware 17 R4 is a newer system with the newer GPU gtx10 series. Yet 16 GBs is showing to be too little memory to be able to use this laptop and not experience drag time. All that said your research and help with work arounds I hope will prove to work for my memory leakage. Thank you for placing it here.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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17K Posts
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January 23rd, 2017 15:00
1. You get the sized HDD/SSD that you custom-build the computer with.
While a computer will run fine with 120gb drive ... by the time Dell and Windows-10 drops some Recovery Partitions on it, Windows-10 install, and some Apps (not even large games), virtual memory swap-file, and leave 10 gigs free work space on it, you are cutting it pretty close. But I have seen it work for "mom and pop" or business computer.
Still, minimum SSD I install as C: boot is 240gb these days. SSDs are cheap now. If you want a bigger one, you can upgrade it.
To try to survive with 120gb C: drive as a gamer (read ... large game installs) ... be sure your games, Steam, Origin, etc. are setup to use D: instead.
Also, you will probably have to do this:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/change-default-save-location-windows-10
3. 16gb of ram memory should be fine. This is not causing gaming lag.
invalid_target
1 Message
0
July 23rd, 2017 09:00
I have a 13 R2, and getting the same garbage. 23GB? definite mem leak. I have all latest win updates.