Jump to content

Serious memory leak on XP Pro x64 with at least 1.7.4 and 1.7.5


[NPH]

Recommended Posts

Note Before I Start: I am not using the nVidia Firewall. Besides, even if I was, by all accounts the issues with it have been fixed. The newest reports of problems with it that I could find on Google, were very old (almost 2 years). My nForce drivers are version 9.53. Also, back on an older computer in 2006 when I did have it installed, I had no problem with uTorrent eating memory.

Anyway...

I only have 30 torrents open right now. Never have had a problem with functionality, I always get really good performance on download and upload, its great. I havent had any of the performance or functionality problems that other people have mentioned here. I use uTorrent constantly.

However, I have recently noticed that if I leave uTorrent open for a long time, say, over 24 hours, at some point when I sit down to use it my computer will be sluggish - incredibly odd to me, since I'm running a Core2Duo E6700 with 2 GB of RAM with striped 10,000 RPM drives (in other words there is no reason for windows to ever be sluggish under normal usage scenarios).

This morning, fed up and finally a little suspicious of uTorrent, I checked the process list, and lo and behold, uTorrent was using 743 MB of RAM, after which, from what I could tell, it started utilizing the page file and slowly filling that up as well. Yay. This was odd to me, as I had been aware of the nVidia Firewall problem prior to setting up my new computer last month and purposely did not install it to prevent this very problem. Potential problem, anyway, since it didn't happen to me last year.

I closed uTorrent (after which my computer was as chipper and responsive as ever) and went to work. Came back, started it up, left it running for a few hours, and it is now using about 140 MB of RAM, with a small increment every time the process list refreshes - never a decrease even if I delete torrents from the list. I never remember uTorrent using this much RAM, ever, even when I had been using nVF. ESPECIALLY not 750~ MB. That's more than leaky ol' FireFox 2 has ever used. I dont think Ive ever had FireFox 2 push over 500 and I leave it open for weeks on end with tabs and windows galore. No memory problems with any other kind of network-related software.

My first guess is that there is come kind of issue with uTorrent inside a 64-bit environment, though I can't be asked how seeing as, well, its closed-source, and I'm not hugely experienced with C++ anyway. I have experience finding memory leaks in Valgrind on Linux, but I can't be dicked to start installing dev tools on my media/game machine; I never wanted to be a windows dev, don't know anything about microsoft libs and APIs, so I'm going to leave it at that. I'm quite happy staying with C and Python on *nix.

So, just letting you guys know. I saw another thread reporting GDI handle leaks that resulted in the same problem, also on 64-bit XP and 64-bit Vista, but it didn't look like anything really came out of the report. The dev couldn't re-create the problem (though he didn't specify what architecture he was trying to re-create it on, so I'm not confident that the report was followed through in detail). I'm wondering if I could be having the exact same problem, since its definitely not the nVidia Firewall.

I am just verifying that the problem does exist and it is definitely within uTorrent. I am anal about what gets installed on my windows box. I am familiar with every last process, fork, and child on my machine, what makes them, and what they do. It has to be some kind of uTorrent problem on at least 64-bit Windows XP, I can't fathom it being anything else unless somehow nVidia Firewall is broken again and its also somehow magically gotten onto my machine without my explicit permission (unlikely).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello!

I have recently experienced this issue too! I am running Windows 2003 Enterprise (64bit) on a Core2Duo with 6GB RAM, and I recently discovered after a few odd disconnections that uTorrent ate up ALL RAM!

As I fiddled around with uTorrent I discovered that the memory leak ONLY occurs while it's scanning a folder! I recently reinstalled the server and had to add all my previous torrents (only seeds, no downloads), so it had to scan all the files for each specific torrent before seeding. When it scans a folder the memory goes from approximately 200MB usage to 6GB, with slowdowns as result until i _stop the scanning_ or _terminate uTorrent_. As soon as the scanning is complete the memory drops down to 200MB again (uTorrent using approx 60MB in my case).

Don't know if it's any help, but so far I have not discovered any memory leaks while seeding, only when uTorrent is doing the file checking. I'll leave uTorrent on for a few days and log the memory usage to see if I can reproduce [NPH]'s error. However the memory leak happens _every_ time I let uTorrent check a torrent.

Edit: It seems that uTorrent somehow doesn't flush the file from RAM when scanning. Apparently uTorrent reads the file into memory, but when it continues to the next file it doesn't flush the previous one. If I scan a torrent that has approx 300MB files the memory leak goes up about 300MB. And since many of my torrents by far exceed my RAM the memory leak becomes greater than my system can handle, thus causing the crashes and disconnections. Just my observations :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Isn't this just case of large system cache being used (it's the default for server variants of Windows)? It causes the disk cache to be almost completely unlimited, leaving only some 48 MB or so for applications (can't remember the exact number, but it was barely enough for Windows itself).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[NPH] said, "Heres my hijackthis log."

Ok, looking through it I see lots of missing links. Sometimes they're harmless, the result of uninstall programs that aren't thorough. But it seems strange that the files mentioned are MISSING because they should be core Microsoft Windows files!

O23 - Service: Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service (dmadmin) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\System32\dmadmin.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Event Log (Eventlog) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: HTTP SSL (HTTPFilter) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\System32\lsass.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service (ImapiService) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\imapi.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\msdtc.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Net Logon (Netlogon) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: NT LM Security Support Provider (NtLmSsp) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: NVIDIA Display Driver Service (NVSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\nvsvc64.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Plug and Play (PlugPlay) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: IPSEC Services (PolicyAgent) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Protected Storage (ProtectedStorage) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (RDSessMgr) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\sessmgr.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Virtual Disk Service (vds) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\System32\vds.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\System32\vssvc.exe (file missing)

O23 - Service: WMI Performance Adapter (WmiApSrv) - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\wmiapsrv.exe (file missing)

I'd be surprised if Windows even BOOTS without errors!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Isn't this just case of large system cache being used (it's the default for server variants of Windows)? It causes the disk cache to be almost completely unlimited, leaving only some 48 MB or so for applications (can't remember the exact number, but it was barely enough for Windows itself).

It happens even on non-server editions. But yes, the system cache freaks out and pages -everything- out of RAM. This won't happen with 1.8.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

People sometimes enable the large system cache on their systems. I have no idea why, but they do. But yea, this seems to happen regardless of the setting. With enough many torrents running uTorrent eats at least 100MB more memory than it should (compared to disk cache size) for me as well. Waiting to see how v1.8 improves things, then :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Isn't there any fix for this? Any beta of 1.8? Any Windows setting?

I have been forced to use BitComet, because i normaly download with about 3-4MB/s and my system becomes lagging within a few minutes when using uTorrent.

Using uTorrent 1.7.5 on Vista 32bit with 1GB ram.

Still using uTorrent for slower downloads because BitComet is driving me nuts:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Ok, looking through it I see lots of missing links. Sometimes they're harmless, the result of uninstall programs that aren't thorough. But it seems strange that the files mentioned are MISSING because they should be core Microsoft Windows files!

His log shows "missing" system files because he's running a 32-bit application that can't see the real system32 directory. :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I've noticed this problem as well. Here's my HJT Log, system's so clean that even MSIE is missing! :P (Don't worry about those 4 run once reports, just some minor changes I slipstreamed into my xp install disc.)

Oh, if the earlier comments found in this thread refering that this may be due to windows cache, .. my Processor Scheduling and Memory Usage Options are set to favor the active Program Performance, I also run Windows without a Pagefile (4GB of RAM, page isn't necessary). Lastly, my uTorrent cache size is set manually to 32MB, and I do not have the option to allow the increase of my cache size when cache trashing (unsure if that even has an effect without automatic caching enabled). Would you predict that this may still yet be the Windows Cache causing my leaks?

--

Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2

Scan saved at 9:37:30 AM, on 11/27/2007

Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600)

MSIE: Unable to get Internet Explorer version!

Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:

C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe

C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe

C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe

C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe

C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe

C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe

C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe

C:\Program Files\uTorrent\uTorrent.exe

C:\WINDOWS\system32\msiexec.exe

C:\Documents and Settings\Injekt\Desktop\HiJackThis.exe

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = about:blank

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =

R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName =

R3 - Default URLSearchHook is missing

O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\RunOnce: [nltide_3] rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSectionEx nLite.inf,C,,4,N (User 'NETWORK SERVICE')

O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\RunOnce: [nltide_2] regsvr32 /s /n /i:U shell32 (User 'NETWORK SERVICE')

O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-18\..\RunOnce: [nltide_3] rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSectionEx nLite.inf,C,,4,N (User 'SYSTEM')

O4 - HKUS\.DEFAULT\..\RunOnce: [nltide_3] rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSectionEx nLite.inf,C,,4,N (User 'Default user')

O13 - DefaultPrefix:

O13 - WWW Prefix:

O13 - Home Prefix:

O13 - Mosaic Prefix:

O13 - FTP Prefix:

O13 - Gopher Prefix:

--

End of file - 1560 bytes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...