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The infamous dwm.exe hogging lots of memory. FYI this is not a specific program issue. It just happens with any programs, activities randomly.
I'm getting really tired of killing dwm.exe every so often so that it will release the occupied memory. When is this going to be fixed? Is this ever going to be fixed even?
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I believe it has nothing to do with Chromium-based Edge/Chrome, since the issue persists outside of that app as well. Based on your build number I presume you're on Release Preview channel for Insider, same as mine.
How about trying full shutdown when you power down the system? (Windows -> Shift + Shut down)
Yes the issue has been ongoing for long, apparently build 9316 did had some reduced occurrences but it's still happening when my laptop goes to sleep.
Interessting! I actually was doing some work, checked task manager, DWM.exe was at around 140MB. I then went to the post office, the laptop was sleeping during that time, I got back, checked task manager, and DWM.exe was now at 640MB. So maybe sleep has something to do with it too.
It totally has something to do with chrome. When I open lots of tabs and lots of videos, then also opening a lot of videos in VLC. DWM.exe starts to rise and rise. So I think the issue is connected to video or 3d acceleration, mostly Chrome uses a lot and triggers it.
It may also just be related to Intel iGPUs only, so mostly laptops. Because I actually saw this in my logs the other day and I also have lots of DWM.exe crashes in the past:
https://i.imgur.com/xnZbAxa.png
https://i.imgur.com/HrCD20u.png thats the intel driver which causes dwm to crash
Yes, that is plausible. Since hardware accelerated video decoding may be a cause of it. Though I had no issues on VLC/Chrome video playback (since my usage is less than an hour per session)
There's also a trick to restart Intel graphics card, if it's not working well. You can use Win + Ctrl + Shift + B to restart the integrated graphics driver or at least refresh DWM (from what I roughly know).
I want to put this also here, because it seems to be related or at least in parts:
The issue of the entire screen going black and crashes of DWM I have randomly, I kinda think it is related to the Game Service which brings aboard a gameinputredist.dll which seems to cause some crashes of this.
Hi, I used the old oem drivers for intel hd630 for dell xps 9570, 26.20.100.6952 to be more specific, from the dell website and it appears to be working well. You can find them there if you want to give them a try . Today I have opened a lot of windows, memory went as far as 400+Mb for dwm.exe but after closing it goes back to ~180, so far the bug does not appear to be happening in this old driver, if 180mb is a "normal amount" I do not know, this laptop has a 4k screen I guess dwm.exe probably uses a little more memory since 4k has more pixels.
More information if it helps:
-Model and specs: Dell xps 9570 4k uhd touch intel i7 8750h, intel hd 630, nvme ssd, nvidia maxq 1050ti
-Bug started happening after a clean windows reinstall using the image from MS in February 2021
-Fast boot seems to have no impact, dwm.exe will run in DWM-1/DWM-2 username after full shutdown even logging always in the same admin windows account ( just providing information don't known if that matters)
-Bug happened in intel uhd drivers 27.20.100.9316 and in the windows device manager rollback one
-Installed 26.20.100.6952 from dell website and it appears to be working without the bug (for now if it changes I will edit this post), (not blaming intel just trying out the integrated and display drivers with old ones from 2019)
-Some sort of dwm.leak was acknowledged "We’re working on a fix to address a DWM memory leak that was introduced in the previous flight" (Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21332 | Windows Insider Blog)
-Some sort of dwm.leak bug was fixed "We fixed a DWM memory leak impacting Insiders in recent flights" (Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 21337 | Windows Insider Blog)
-My version is 20H2 (19042.868) I am not sure it was a insiders version and the bug was there, since the sentence only refers to a bug impacting recent insiders I am not sure it is the same.
-Might be coincidence but It appeared to start or get worse when using the task bar and opening various "settings" windows multiple times, after that it also started increasing with little increments when watching a youtube video in firefox (reached 1.2 gbytes and then I restarted).
