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Vostro 5890/Intel UHD Graphics/Windows 11: Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) memory leak
This could potentially also go in the Windows 11 forum, or in the Support forum, but I’m hoping to hear from other users as well– find out who might be experiencing something similar and/or alert them that this might happen to them.
My new Vostro 5890 (Intel UHD Graphics 630, Windows 11) about once a day or more while in use, starts page thrashing and becomes unresponsive; if I don’t catch the problem in time (which is often, since it’s silent), it must be shut down hard and rebooted. The problem is a memory leak in Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe). I don’t have to be doing anything more than browsing pages with Firefox, and suddenly DWM will start ballooning. I can’t figure out what kicks it off, but once it starts growing, it seems to grow exponentially – starting at 50-100 MB, it quickly consumes several gigabytes and the system starts page thrashing and stops responding. At worst, during one event (according to Event Viewer) Windows’ Resource Exhaustion Detector reported DWM consuming 25 GB of virtual memory (the system has 16GB of RAM).
If I keep Task Manager open and watch DWM, I can sometimes catch the problem while it’s relatively small. Logging out causes DWM to exit normally. If I kill the DWM process from Task Manager, it usually just restarts without problems, though sometimes there are other problems down the line (e.g. explorer.exe hanging). The problem never seems to happen while the screen is locked; I can leave it locked for hours at a time without worry. Using the graphical desktop seems to be a prerequisite. I can’t take my eyes off Task Manager lest DWM get out of control.
Windows users have complained about DWM memory leaks (sometimes specifically associated with Intel integrated graphics) since at least Windows 10 in 2020. Most of these anecdotes end with upgrading to the latest graphics drivers. I am up to date on drivers and firmware as far as I can tell from SupportAssist, Windows Update etc.but the problem persists. So far I’ve made three calls to tech support so far about this issue.
Call #1 October 27, several days after I took delivery of the system. The system had been shipped from the factory with Windows 10 installed (20H1, I think), but I had immediately performed an upgrade to Windows 11 via Windows Update. When I spoke to the tech, I related that some folks on the net reported a DWM memory leak that started in WIndows 10 and survived an update to Windows 11; in those cases, installing Windows 11 from scratch reportedly cleared up the problem. The Dell tech agreed, so he stayed on the phone while I created Windows 11 install media, wiped the SSD and installed Windows 11. He then via RemoteAssist installed the latest drivers and Dell software. This unfortunately did not clear up the problem.
I’m not sure why I didn’t notice the problem (much?) during most of November, but during that time I expanded the RAM in the system from 8GB to 16GB, adding another of the same Samsung 8GB DIMM that was already in the system. Toward the end of November the problem came back with a vengeance.
Call #2 was December 1. The tech noticed that the BIOS was out of date (SupportAssist's automatic check hadn't found it). He stayed on the line while I manually downloaded and updated the BIOS. The problem soon recurred, however.
In between calls 2 and 3, I installed Intel's latest driver for UHD Graphics, using Intel Driver & Support Assistant. This updated the driver version from 27.20.100.9664 (Dell's latest) to 30.0.101.1069 (Intel's latest). The problem recurred that evening, however.
Call #3 was December 7. The tech fundamentally didn't understand the problem, or I didn't explain it well enough. Even though I described a memory leak problem, he focused on what he thought were potential hard drive issues. In a RemoteAssist session he disabled the SysMain and Windows Search services, performed a Disk Cleanup on my C: drive (SSD), re-installed the Dell version of the UHD Graphics driver (27.20.100.9664), and installed a new system BIOS that had just been released on 12/6. He then declared my issue resolved, and told me Dell support would call me the next day (12/8) between 10 am and noon to check on me. When I mentioned the disabled services, he told me in a reassuring (condescending?) tone that the reboot we’d just performed had automatically restarted them. After our call, II had to manually restart both services and re-enable search indexing on the system. I figured we had at least updated the BIOS, so maybe it would have an effect; the problem persisted however. Dell support never called back on 12/8 either.
Meanwhile, I’ve been troubleshooting the problem by eliminating settings and background actions that potentially might be contributing to it.
- I’d been at times using Windows’ Magnifier feature, which was turned on during several of the crashes. I’ve stopped using it.
- I’ve always had the power settings blank the screen after 10 minutes idle, but in addition I had the screen saver set to blank and lock the screen after 10 minutes. I’ve turned the screen saver off.
- I’d been running the free 8GadgetPack software to display a weather gadget on the screen. I’ve uninstalled it.
- I’d been running TeamViewer in the background. It’s still installed but not running.
- I was using a custom background image; I’m now using the Windows 11 default.
I’m running out of things to turn off. It’s been suggested that I downgrade to Windows 10; I really don’t want to do that. I like Windows 11, and I don’t want to live in fear of upgrading to 11 if I don’t know the problem has been fixed. If this is a Windows/Intel bug, I’d rather it get reported and worked on than ignored. II think my settings are pretty vanilla. imagine there’s something I’m running or doing that initiates the problem, but it’s nothing “illegal,” nothing I shouldn’t be doing on Windows. I can turn off some user interface fluff like transparency settings, but I’d like some guidance and some tracking. I don’t mind working the problem, but I’d like some backup here. I mean, I have a one-hour Zoom call to be on tomorrow, and I can’t use this computer because there’s a good chance it’ll go belly-up during that time. That’s unacceptable.
Thanks for listening.
NJDave
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December 18th, 2021 13:00
I think I may have the problem licked now.
The solution to the problem is in the latest generic graphics driver from Intel, 30.0.101.1191. This is now an official release and includes the fix to the memory leak problems and instability in Dell's current driver, 27.20.100.9664. It's very important that the Dell OEM driver stay installed on the system and the new driver installed "over" it, as per this notice from Intel. Both drivers must be present in the system's Driver Store; otherwise Windows Update will try to revert the driver back to the OEM driver. Of course, use Device Manager to ensure the new driver is the active one.
That's what I tried to do on my system initially (before reinstalling Windows), but I couldn't get the new driver reliably installed. I suspect the Driver Store somehow got corrupted, perhaps when I was using Driver Manager to try and uninstall drivers. Maybe the version of the driver that Windows loads in the background during installation was causing a problem (I eliminated that this time around). Reinstalling Windows and keeping it simple (OEM driver, then generic driver) seems to have done the trick.
I need to mention that Intel warns against using their generic drivers long-term. OEM drivers like Dell's have customizations and performance tweaks specifically for their hardware, and ideally, users should be running the OEM drivers. I sincerely hope Dell will soon release their own version of the driver that includes the DWM fix (i.e. one labeled 30.0.101.1191 or newer), and when they do, I will use that instead. So far, I have noticed no ill effects using the generic driver, and my system seems to finally be stable.
I wish Dell had been more help (actually, any help) with this issue, which I've been wrestling with for two months on a brand new system. Dell users with complicated/intermittent problems will have better luck searching the internet for clues than consulting Dell support.
NJDave
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December 10th, 2021 09:00
Thanks to the moderators for clearing this for posting (it had been flagged as spam).
I just ran across this notice from Intel which reports this exact bug (or something similar) in the integrated graphics driver (on Windows 10) and that it's fixed in the newest BETA driver and in production drivers to come. I've installed the beta driver, which supports Windows 11 as well, and will advise on how it's going. I imagine a production driver containing the fix will be released in the next couple of weeks and available via Driver & Support Assistant. I don't know what (if any) specific modifications Dell makes for the versions they release; can anyone advise? The latest Dell driver for Intel graphics dates basically from June (with a tweak in September to fix an installation bug). I've been running the current Intel version of the driver for several days without any (other!!) ill effects.
I'd classify this as maybe solved, if the fix in the beta driver is effective.
NJDave
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December 13th, 2021 11:00
I’m prepared to call this problem solved. (It's a wonder that more users aren’t reporting it, since my graphics usage IMHO is about as vanilla as you can get, and the effects of the bug are often incapacitating.)
The problem is a memory leak in Display Window Manager on systems with Intel UHD Graphics 630 and graphics drivers newer than 27.20.100.8587 (including Dell’s current driver, 27.20.100.9664 A03). It's reported on Windows 10 but I can attest it affects 11 as well. Intel announced the bug and the fix here.
The fix is in Intel’s latest beta integrated graphics driver 30.0.101.1121, available here, and newer production drivers to come. NOTE that the .exe and .zip versions are NOT interchangeable; the .exe installer is highly recommended over the .zip version.
I don't know whether Dell has any platform-specific customizations in their version of the graphics driver. So far I haven't experienced any ill effects from the Intel beta driver, and my intention is to keep the driver up-to-date using Intel Driver & Support Assistant, at least until Dell releases a version with the fix included.
NJDave
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December 13th, 2021 20:00
I've un-accepted the Intel beta graphics driver as the solution. Here's why:
After I installed the beta driver I still had the Dell version (27.20.100.9664) present (two copies, since it had been loaded multiple times) on the system and could not get rid of it. After removing all the Intel drivers from the system in safe mode and installing the beta driver, some time later I'd find the 27.20 version reported to be running in Device Manager. This happened multiple times. Just today I found that to be the case, so in Device Manager -> Intel UHD Graphics 630 -> Properties -> Update Driver -> Browse my computer for drivers -> Let me pick from a list..., I reloaded the newest driver, and a few minutes thereafter I experienced the memory leak again: DWM was 4GB and growing. I really can't be 100% sure which driver was active when the problem occurred.
So... I decided to clean up the system. I reinstalled Windows 11 from installation media, with internet disconnected. Before setting up my Microsoft account (which requires internet) I entered audit mode and installed the beta driver. Once I was up and running, in Windows Update, one of the bundle of updates to be immediately installed... is the Dell driver, 27.20.100.9664, which would just muddy things up again.
After a look at Intel's own community message board -- which is staffed by actual Intel technicians -- they really stress that their generic drivers should NOT be used, that the manufacturer's driver, i.e. Dell's, has all the platform-specific customizations and is the ONLY one that should be used. It looks like Windows Update is enforcing this as well. I'm not sure where that leaves me. Unlike my past posts here, Dell Support has not responded to this post at all, at least not yet. I'm grateful for being able to state my problem in detail here, since at least one Dell support rep I spoke with didn't have a clue what I was talking about and made a mess of my system to boot.
Since I now seem to have the beta driver installed, and no other version, I've paused Windows Update for a week to give myself a chance to test it. Around the end of that week if there are no hiccups, I'll try engaging Dell support again to see if they can be any help this time. If not, I don't know what I'll do... maybe get a cheap graphics card so I can bypass Intel graphics altogether, maybe buy some other manufacturer's machine with AMD graphics.
NJDave
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December 16th, 2021 21:00
Latest status: I've been running with the 30.0.101.1121 generic beta driver for 3 days without problems. Intel has now released a production generic production driver, 30.0.101.1191, including the DWM fix. I've upgraded to that, but Windows Update still wants to replace it with the Dell OEM driver from September. Reportedly Windows Update "prefers" the OEM driver, but there is supposed to be a way to keep the generic Intel driver installed, for testing at least. Will try Dell Support again... maybe they have their own beta with the fix, or can recommend another way to keep the fix installed.
alveus
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February 2nd, 2022 09:00
30.0.101.1191 UHD driver is now available from Dell via Support Assist
DELL-Cares
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February 2nd, 2022 09:00
Thank you for reaching out to us. We’d be glad to look into this for you right away. Before we proceed, we strongly recommend that you remove the Service Tag from the public post for security reasons. Also, as our interaction would involve sharing personally identifiable information, please private message us so that we can start working toward a resolution.
NJDave
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February 2nd, 2022 12:00
That's good to hear... though it's not on the website yet, as far as I can see. The current offering for Vostro 5890 on the website is 30.0.100.9955, A03. SupportAssist isn't offering 101.1191 to me, while I'm currently running the generic version of that rev. I'm fine with generic for now, though I imagine there may be a Dell laptop or three that can't run it without issues.
alveus
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February 4th, 2022 01:00
My Optiplex 7070 has got it, but my wife's Inspiron 5770 has not yet been offered it. The driver on that is the 620 version not the 630 version on the Optiplex. So far so good on the Optiplex.
NJDave
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February 5th, 2022 10:00
Wow, I see that. If I look for drivers for the Optiplex 7070, there it is (30.0.101.1191, A00). Dell says this is for 8th gen Intel CPUs, which I guess is why I'm not seeing it for my Vostro (10th gen). Meanwhile the generic driver is for 6th through 12th (and some others). I dunno how many platform-specific versions of the drivers Dell offers, in their infinite wisdom/very mysterious ways, but I imagine it's best not to apply them across platforms. Probably also best not to install the generic driver unless you're experiencing the memory leak problem (which I was seeing daily). Thanks for the update!
Mark__F
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September 27th, 2022 17:00
Hope this is the right place. I have a Vostro 3888 with a 10th gen Core i5, came with W10 and now has Win11. I haven't used it much, it was bought as a future replacement for an aging tower, but said aging tower has been imnpressive so still in use. Anyway... long story short, this Vostro is suffering from DWM eating tons of RAM intermittently. I've seen 2 Gigs a few times so I upgraded from 8 to 16 Gigs of RAM, then saw DWM run 8 Gigs of RAM yesterday. Tried all the fixes Google showed me with no help. Finally found a few threads pointing to the Intel graphics. So this is September 2022 and Dell is still only offering driver version 27.20.100.9664 for my machine. Problem seems to occur if I let a video stream go on for hours in a browser, like news videos on autoplay for example. So luckily I found this thread. Decided to give Intel generic driver a spin. Today, their latest is 31.0.101.2111 (for my 10th gen Core i5), so I went for it. On install. there was an option to Clean Install the driver, remembered reading I should leave the old one in place, so I did not check the box to clean install. So far so good, DWM remains under 100MB even with multiple browser tabs open and videos streaming. Too soon to say if any Dell driver customizations have been lost (that I will notice). Hopefully Dell will get their old drivers updated to fix this annoying bug.
NJDave
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September 27th, 2022 19:00
@Mark__F , glad the current Intel driver is working for you! I've been free of the problem since last December. I'm dismayed that Dell hasn't updated the driver in so long. It's a particularly nasty bug to leave unpatched.
Unfortunately it took me a while to get a handle on the related problem of having to have both drivers present on the system and reliably loading the right one. You can check the version in the device properties in Device Manager. If it's not the right driver, assuming both drivers are present you can load the right one by clicking "Update Driver", "Browse my computer for drivers", then "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer". If the wrong driver keeps loading, there's a procedure I outlined here that seems to work.
Mark__F
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September 27th, 2022 20:00
Again, I can't thank you enough for this. Things went rather smoothly for me (knock on wood...), as I installed the latest generic driver, without clean installing it. In Device Manager, current generic driver version is showing. I went to Dell to have my drivers checked and they are offering me the old one, but I don't think they'll force it on me, at least I hope not. Hopefully having the old one still in there will prevent update problems for the display driver. Unreal how Dell is still offetring an old driver, not just old but 'defective' as well. It's been a few hours now and things are still going great, DWM only running somewhere between 26 and 80MB of RAM, even with video streaming and 24 tabs open in Firefox. I even have Chrome open with a flash game going. Fingers crossed !
Mark__F
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November 4th, 2022 10:00
A quick update. Using the Intel generic driver version 31 did not go all that well. Every other week, teh Dell driver (version 27###) would be re-installed silently ; I noticed this because DWM would start eating RAM again. I tried the clean driver install : no better. I tried disabling the Dell support agent : no luck. What I ended up doing was check (again) on Windows Update for an optional driver, and there it was... in version 30.0.101.3111 So I installed that driver, it's been more than a week, and all looks good. I just checked on Dell's site and they are now offering this version 30 driver as well for my Vostro 3888.. Finally...
NJDave
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November 4th, 2022 12:00
Wow, @Mark__F -- Dell now has the patched driver for my 5890 as well! HUZZAH!
And it only took them a year! (facepalm emoji here) It's really the same version I've been running since last December, but it's good to know it's now blessed, and that users should no longer have to perform an unnatural act to get it installed.
Sorry about the problems you had, but I would hope that's in the past now. I guess I need to come up with a new pet issue to write about here. Thanks for the update!