Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) memory leakage in Windows 10 (Version 2004).

Hello, I'm OP and thought would chime in with a different anecdote.

The issue was initially observed on my old laptop, which then had intel's iGPU with 1070, but no MUX switch. I've bought a new laptop. It's AMD based with 3070 this time and has MUX switch. I've been using this machine everyday in both iGPU and dGPU mode for the last 6 months, and have never observed the same issue once.

Also was on Windows 10 for 5 months, and 11 for about a month now if that makes any difference.

So I'm almost certain Intel is to blame.

I see a few people mentioning integrated graphics with Intel. However, I think the problem is actually in general with dwm. I've seen this leak for over a year now which can only be fixed via restarting despite using the latest Nvidia drivers using an RTX 1080.

However, in my case, the leak is only apparent when looking at "Dedicated GPU Memory". The aggregate value for this is visible under Performance>GPU, but you can see the per process breakdown under Details by right clicking the columns and enabling the column. While this does not show up under regular memory accounting, it can seemingly cause paging since I've observed dwm.exe using over 16GB of dedicated GPU memory! My machine only has 16GB total and the 1080 does not have that much GPU memory. I suspect that it falls back to the general OS memory allocated if there is insufficient GPU memory.

I strongly suspect that this is a memory leak in Windows itself and that it is not a driver issue since dwm.exe is the only process showing this behavior.

System Summary (including only relevant info):

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Version 10.0.19043 Build 19043

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB

Total Physical Memory 15.9 GB

Available Physical Memory 7.60 GB

Total Virtual Memory 28.9 GB

Available Virtual Memory 14.4 GB

Page File Space 13.0 GB

Display:

Name NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

Driver Version 30.0.14.9613

Installed Drivers C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_5292bbfbf575e2d2\nvldumdx.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_5292bbfbf575e2d2\nvldumdx.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_5292bbfbf575e2d2\nvldumdx.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_5292bbfbf575e2d2\nvldumdx.dll

Yes, the UHD 630 also has a driver conflict with Windows

Does Intel HD Graphics 630 do the same in Windows 10?

Hi, now DWM.EXE is hogging much memory if I am not terminating it:

12:39:18 PM: DWM.EXE is hogging 548.7 MB of my 16 GB of my RAM.

12:40:12 PM: DWM.EXE is hogging 578.9 MB of my 16 GB of my RAM.

Result: DWM is hogging +30.2 MB of my RAM.

Do I need to terminate Desktop Window Manager, quit some of the visual settings or end Chrome?