Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) Memory Leak? (Answered)

[Sniper Charlie]

Hello everyone, I did look up and it seems this has either happened before or is STILL an ongoing problem.
It seemed to have happened after an update because when I built my new PC in Dec 23, all was well at the time. Just opening it, transferring files, or sometimes doing nothing at all, it will spike.

For instance, this morning, I moved 5 files from Desktop to Video folder, it went from 77MB of RAM use, to 150MB of use. And it idles there, and only gets larger as you use your PC.

Ive seen forum posts from Reddit and other sources, that people will get in to the GB stages and or Windows Explorer eventually crashed.

Yes I reset it if it gets too high, and I did find someone who said it had something to do with your wallpaper Slideshow as well as your Windows color theme. I have both those off and do not use them. Even changed the power profile to disable Slideshow.

As always, any help on this would be appreciated. If its just a waiting game for Microsoft to update, thats no surprise. Thanks!

[N3tRunn3r]

Win 11 or Win 10?

In Win 11 the DWM.exe usually memory leaks and goes past 9 GB ..

[Sniper Charlie]

N3tRunn3r a écrit :

Win 11 or Win 10?

In Win 11 the DWM.exe usually memory leaks and goes past 9 GB ..

I am using 11 Home. What is dwm?

[N3tRunn3r]

desktop window manager

it has been leaking memory since 23H2 in W11

the dwm.exe should be between 60 MB - 160 MB

if bigger, you need to force kill this process a few times in a row and to restart your machine straight afterwards to temporarily fix this memory leak, as it heavily slows your machine down as browsing the net and even scrolling, and of course especially playing games .. with full fps it either feels like 10 fps or even foces to use 10 fps, limits your system resources ... a true performance and responsive killer if it leaks memory.

There are various opened threads and complaints at the official MS Feedback-Hub:

Official Micrososft Feedback-Hub
Windows 11 - DWM Consuming Too Much Memory

https://aka.ms/AAd833n


the explorer.exe is fine as you have described it above..

It seems Steam has just fixed their own memory leak on their Steam client since its stable client update from Jan 13 2024. Steam had also heavily leaked memory up to 12 GB and more, but since Jan 13th, Steam sticks again around 1.0~1.4 GB ...

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/5540052310300845065/

[Sniper Charlie]

N3tRunn3r a écrit :

desktop window manager

it has been leaking memory since 23H2 in W11

the dwm.exe should be between 60 MB - 160 MB

if bigger, you need to force kill this process a few times in a row and to restart your machine straight afterwards to temporarily fix this memory leak, as it heavily slows your machine down as browsing the net and even scrolling, and of course especially playing games .. with full fps it either feels like 10 fps or even foces to use 10 fps, limits your system resources ... a true performance and responsive killer if it leaks memory.

There are various opened threads and complaints at the official MS Feedback-Hub:

Official Micrososft Feedback-Hub
Windows 11 - DWM Consuming Too Much Memory

https://aka.ms/AAd833n


the explorer.exe is fine as you have described it above..

It seems Steam has just fixed their own memory leak on their Steam client since its stable client update from Jan 13 2024. Steam had also heavily leaked memory up to 12 GB and more, but since Jan 13th, Steam sticks again around 1.0~1.4 GB ...

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/5540052310300845065/

Thank you. Seriously. I thought something was wrong with my new PC. On a side note, it seems to spike very heavily when I plug in my 2 Seagate Expansions (or any USB for that matter). Ive let it go to 600-700MB. Then I reset it.

This leak is kinda awful! Anyways, thank you again. It is appreciated.