Context: My computer runs Windows 10, and it was bought as a gaming pc. Good gpu, good cpu, 16 Gb of RAM, etc. There are two hard drives, a very small (100 Gb) SSD for the OS, plus a 3Tb HDD.
In the last few months, I've started having RAM problems. Apps would crash shortly after getting high memory usage warnings. I've suspected that one of my memory sticks was broken, corrupted, or something like that, because I was getting those warnings when the task manager said I was using around 7.9 Gb / 16 Gb. I used all the tests and diagnostics I could find, but the RAM didn't show any sign of problem. Yet, Things started crashing around half usage.
It got even worse in the last few days. I couldn't even have discord opened while playing Starcraft II, or one of them would crash with no warning.
What I've finally noticed is the committed memory usage. It was hanging around 64Gb / 64.9Gb. I knew absolutely nothing about what this even was, but it struck me as suspicious, since the number was so high.
I've started monitoring this graph with RamMap. Bullseye, several times without a doubt, something crashed as soon as it hit peak (100%), and after the crash it dropped down 1Gb or so.
But restarting the computer made no difference. Straight away on startup, I had around 61Gb / 64.9Gb of committed memory, even when normal memory usage was as low as 2Gb / 16Gb. Looking at the extra columns in details of the task manager about committed memory made no difference, it seems no process was actually using all that committed memory.
The solution I've found to the crashes, after much trial and error, was to tell my system to use no pagefile at all and restarting, which seems to have cleared the entire thing. Before that, it was set to "automatically managed by the system". Now committed memory hangs around the same amount that RAM actually uses.
But if I turn the pagefile back on, it goes back to slowly but surely growing. It seems to have grown around 5Gb already in just a few day.
So my question is: Is there a way to keep a log of what process is comitting memory then not freeing it, or is there a way, from an already filled up pagefile, to know what process is linked to what size of the pagefile?
I have a backup of the (huge) pagefile.sys file from before removing it entirely. The ideal solution would be to be able to analyze that backup file, instead of, for example, using real-time monitoring software, and letting it run for the days, weeks, or maybe even months it takes to get back to that crazy (60+ Gb) usage.
Right now, my only solution is to keep it deactivated. It really feels like a risky workaround, and not a real solution. There is still a process, or service, somewhere in my computer, that is trying to hog up the pagefile, and I'm just denying it the space to commit, instead of finding what it is and fixing it. Furthermore, I'm losing out on the entire pagefile feature because of what is probably one anonymous process containing a memory leak.
Additional weird thing: Everyone online says to use poolmon.exe, available in the Windows Driver Kit. Doesn't work for me. Installing WDK makes no difference, I can't change the install location, and the default one (C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Tools) doesn't exist (there is no "Tools" directory Inside "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\". poolmon is nowhere to be found, and even though it's supposed to work as a standalone, I can't find a download for the .exe directly anywhere for some reason. After a few tries, the WDK setup won't even start anymore, just flashes a blue square window with a toolbox-like icon in the middle of my screen, then disappears within a second and does nothing.
Best Answer
The pagefile may grow to large amounts. 5GB for a pagefile is pretty normal. 64GB is not however.
It is possible for a pagefile to become corrupt, and disabling then re-enabling is one of the methods to solve that problem. You did that, and what you describe now seems like normal behavior. I would therefor advise to keep the pagefile turned on and see if the problems come back.
If so, try setting them to your other drive. If that fixes things, then your harddrive may have a problem and might need to be replaced.