WIndows 8 Excessive Modified Memory Problem

[accordian]

Hi folks,

I've been out of the Windows world for a while--I run Ubuntu on my main machine--but I've been setting up a new Samsung laptop running Windows 8 and have started banging my head against the wall.

Within a few weeks of using the machine, I started getting out-of-memory warnings. Eventually made my way to Resource Monitor and discovered that a huge amount of RAM is listed as Modified--way more than is actually being used by any of the listed processes. I can't seem to pin down any specific app that is causing the problem just from observation. Sometimes it happens even within a few minutes of restarting the machine.

Googled a bit and eventually tried diagnosing the apparent memory leak with poolmon.exe, but I can't seem to figure out exactly what I'm looking for within that tool. Have also tried using RAMMap, but it often won't open when the computer is memory-stressed. When it does work, it indicates the same modified memory values as Resource Monitor but doesn't reflect those values in any views where memory is broken down by process (just adds up to the actual in-use values). Have tried ProcessHacker, and tried emptying the Page List through it, but the Modified Paged List value does not change.

I've done a bit of development and am comfortable with technical troubleshooting, but I'm out of practice with the Windows context and could use some pointers if anyone has some. Machine is quickly becoming unusable.

Screenshots of what I'm looking at are attached. The two poolmon images are the highest byte consumers sorted by paged and non-paged.

Thanks,

Doug

 

[LMiller7]

Memory shown as Modified is that on the modified memory list. This is like a staging area for memory that is waiting to be written to the pagefile before it is moved to the Standby list. But in this case the commit limit has been reached and the pagefile is most likely fully occupied already. This can happen even with low RAM usage. You probably have some kind of memory leak but more information is required. Posting a screenshot of Task Manager - Performance tab showing memory information would help a great deal. This is the best place to start. Everything else is details which may not be relevant to the situation.

 

[accordian]

Thanks for the explanation, LMiller7. That helps me understand what's going on. I'm attaching a screenshot of the Performance tab from Task Manager. Something's definitely awry--only using 1.6 GB RAM (of 8GB total) but only 200MB are available. Any thoughts are appreciated.

(FWIW: I did find some messages in my search about a service called Intellimemory that was installed on all Samsung Windows 8 machines by default. Various posts said that deleting this service solved all sorts of memory issues. However, I can't locate the service on my machine, which was purchased in June, several months after most of the posts I've found on the topic.)

 

[LMiller7]

I haven't heard of Intellimemory before but it appears to be some kind of add-on caching system produced by Condusive. Apparently Samsung made some kind of deal with Condusive and it is included on most of their Windows 8 computers. I am not a fan of any product that claims to improve how Windows manages memory. To me the product is misguided and based on misunderstandings of how Windows manages memory. There seem to be quite a few complaints about it.

Apparently it is controlled by a service called "Intellimemory" and can be disabled in the service control manager. You would need to reboot after disabling it. This may not be the cause of your problem but it would be a good start. These add-on memory managers make the diagnosis of memory problems much more difficult.

 

[accordian]

Just double checked and I still can't find any sign of Intellimemory on my system. The problems that people have with it seem to match up roughly with my problem, but it's not listed as a service and it's not listed as a program under the Control Panel "Uninstall programs..." section. Could it be hiding on my machine somewhere, perhaps embedded in a Samsung process? If not, any idea what else could be causing this based on the Task Manager screenshot? Cached memory definitely looks high.

Here's the Process Tab from Task Manager if that provides any insight--the total MBs used by the processes is nowhere near the 97% of memory it reports as currently in use.

If this were a passing problem I could just roll with it, but it basically is stopping my machine in its tracks every 48 hours.

Thanks for any additional insight.

Doug

 

[accordian]

FWIW, I got RAMMap to work and got this screenshot. Essentially, all the Modified RAM is classified as "Shareable", so it's not linked up with any particular process anywhere, which if I understand correctly means there is no straightforward way to diagnose which process might have the memory leak. Argh.

 

[LMiller7]

Intellimemory may not be installed on your computer. If not, that is good. From what I have learned about Intellimem it's actions are not consistent with what is happening here. Post a screenshot of Resource Monitor - Memory tab with the process list sorted by Commit. This is the only number that has any relevance to this problem.

 

[DavidY]

Do you Restart your machine usually/ recently?

If you just Shutdown the PC and switch it on again, then (unless you changed the defaults) Windows 8's Fast Startup means that instead of a full shutdown, the PC is just hibernating the inner bits of the OS. I'm not sure that leaked memory would be cleared normally.

A Restart (or a full shutdown) might clear it and you can keep a better eye on when the memory starts to disappear.

To do a full shutdown, save your files and close all your apps (because it's quite sudden) and type this at at Command Prompt or using <WindowsKey> + <R>

shutdown.exe /s /f /t 00

 

[accordian]

Thanks LMiller, thanks David.

When I restart, the modified RAM does seem to clear itself. So I've tried keeping the resource monitor open and just haven't caught the moment when it skyrockets. I'm guessing it's fast, though, since I've done this twice and have found it suddenly sky high without controlling the opening and closing of apps enough to get a sense of what it might be.

I'll try doing that again, but I'm going to wait and see if there's any more investigating to be done with the machine while it's in this state, since I can't predict exactly when it will happen again.

Here's the Memory Tab of the Resource Monitor with the processes sorted by Commit size. Unfortunately I don't see any obvious problems with what I see there... maybe I'm missing something?

 

[jkaplan]

Accordian -

I'm having precisely the same problem. It started on my Dell Precision M4500 starting approximately a week ago, shortly after several Windows Updates, which I have rolled back. Could be due to some other upgrade, of course. The system is used only to monitor security cameras, nothing substantive has changed. The 'modified' memory grows to about 5GB, then I start getting out-of-memory warnings, though only about 50% of my 8GB is in use.

Nothing pointing to the culprit appears in the resource monitor or task manager.

Were you ever able to resolve this? If so, how?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Senntisten]

Hey guys. I know this thread is a bit old, but I have the same problem with Modified Memory and was unable to find a solution anywhere on the net. It seems that Intellimemory has been at fault for some, so I tried to think of similar software that could be at fault on mine.

My computer has something called a "cache SSD" from Samsung, which as I understand, is volatile memory much like RAM is.
It came shipped from HP in a RAID configuration merging that drive with the HDD. I don't really understand the details, but this configuration was causing certain PC games to not start, so. I promptly went into BIOS and decoupled them. I must have made a mistake because it wiped out everything on the HDD.

Soo.. after a warranty repair, the computer came back unpaired in any RAID configuration & was once more bootable.
I went into administrative settings and repartitioned the cache SSD as a useable volume drive.
But my computer frequently warns its unable to write to the volume.

This is roughly where my Modified memory issues begin.

I decided to take no chances and disabled the Samsung SSD from Device manager.
And, my computer had a program called Intel Rapid Storage Technology that I disabled from the BIOS.

I'm not sure which of those things is significant, BUT my computer has been running 5 days straight and has less than 20 MB of Modified memory allocation!!

So, my conclusion is it could have been a flaky drive, Intel Rapid Storage Technology, or perhaps IRST trying to write to a flaky drive. i hope that helps someone

 

[hanksterr7]

To find out what is using modified memory, in task manager, processes tab, add a column for "handles". Find the process using a gazillion handles and kill it. Modified memory should go away. For me, it was pdf architect manager service. Disabling the service (in services.msc) solved the problem.

 

[LMiller7]

To find out what is using modified memory, in task manager, processes tab, add a column for "handles". Find the process using a gazillion handles and kill it. Modified memory should go away. For me, it was pdf architect manager service. Disabling the service (in services.msc) solved the problem.

This is not a universal solution to the high modified memory problem. There are multiple possible causes and each case must be handled individually.