memory management

A subtle memory-management bug in the Linux kernel’s ath12k Wi‑Fi driver — tracked as CVE-2024-40979 — could cause a complete kernel crash when a Qualcomm Atheros-based wireless device resumes from suspend, producing a local denial‑of‑service condition for affected hosts. The fault lies in how...

A subtle memory-management timing bug in the Linux kernel has been documented as CVE-2023-52576: an instance where IMA’s kexec cleanup code frees memblock-managed memory after the memblock allocator has already been torn down, producing a use‑after‑free that can lead to kernel instability and...

A small, surgical change in the Linux kernel’s QLogic SCSI driver has closed a potentially serious memory-handling bug: a double-free of the ha->vp_map pointer in the qla2xxx driver that could cause kernel memory corruption and denial-of-service, and — in the worst case — open paths that...

The Linux kernel vulnerability tracked as CVE-2010-0291 — widely discussed at the time as the “do_mremap() mess” or the “mremap/mmap mess” — allowed an unprivileged local user to crash a system or, in some exploit scenarios, escalate to kernel privileges by abusing the kernel’s mmap/mremap logic...

Linux’s memory stack just gained two very practical wins — one in page reclamation (MGLRU) and one in slab allocation (sheaves) — and the numbers being cited by kernel developers, independent labs, and fleet telemetry suggest these are not academic micro‑optimizations but real operational wins...

Microsoft is quietly testing a personality selector inside Copilot that will let users choose how the assistant responds — a subtle but consequential shift in how Microsoft surfaces AI customization to everyday users. Early sightings show the new control living in a “Personality Studio” area of...

I stopped getting predictable hour‑long crashes in a modern PC game by running a tiny, portable utility that watches Windows’ memory standby list and purges it before cached pages starve the game for usable RAM — an unglamorous, surgical workaround that fixed what looked like a memory‑management...

Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has pulled back the curtain on a decades‑old Windows 95 trick: hold the Shift key while choosing Restart and the system would, in many cases, come back to life far faster than a full cold reboot — and the reason lies in the way the Win9x boot stack handed control...

Fix High RAM Usage in Windows 10/11: Find Memory Hogs, Limit Background Apps, and Stop Leaks Difficulty: Intermediate | Time Required: 20 minutes High RAM usage can make Windows feel sluggish, cause stutters in games, slow down tab switching, and trigger “Low memory” warnings—even on PCs that...

Intelligent Standby List Cleaner (ISLC) has quietly become a go‑to troubleshooting tool for gamers and power users who face unexplained stutters, freezes, or crashes caused by Windows’ memory caching behavior, and its pedigree—created by the same developer behind the widely used Display Driver...

Microsoft has quietly pushed a set of targeted changes to Windows 11 that aim to reduce the memory cost of file searches and make File Explorer feel faster — but the gains are pragmatic and limited, and they come against a backdrop of surging memory prices and growing pressure on system...

Microsoft’s Foundry Agent Service has just shed its “goldfish memory” — the platform now offers a built-in, managed memory store that lets agents retain long-term context across sessions, turning ephemeral chatbots into persistent, context-aware helpers for enterprise scenarios. This Public...

Most AI chat apps keep a running file on you — your words, pictures, clicks and even what the assistant “remembers” between sessions — and there are practical, immediate steps you can take right now to shrink that file or stop it growing. Background The recent wave of assistant features —...

AI’s appetite for memory and storage has reshaped the PC market faster than many hobbyists expected, and the idea that this is a coordinated plot to “kill local PCs” is seductive—but misleading. What’s actually happening is a mix of market concentration, prioritization of higher‑margin AI...

The sudden squeeze on memory and storage is no longer a hypothetical: the industry is in the middle of a DRAM and NAND supply shock driven by datacenter build‑outs for AI workloads, and that makes software-level memory thrift — not just buying bigger DIMMs — a strategic necessity for developers...

Windows 11 users are waking up to a simple — and increasingly expensive — problem: a growing number of popular desktop apps are consuming far more RAM than they used to, in many cases because they run inside browser engines (Electron, Chromium via WebView2, or similar wrappers) rather than as...

LG’s reversal on the Copilot shortcut is a rare but telling victory for consumer pushback: after days of viral complaints that a Microsoft Copilot icon had been pushed to many webOS TVs without a clear uninstall path, LG says it will add an option to let owners delete the Copilot shortcut —...

Windows is designed to make the most of every free megabyte of RAM — sometimes a little too aggressively — and a new wave of reporting linking a so-called “memory‑hungry” Windows feature to sluggish PCs has arrived at the same time scientists are reminding us that memory problems in people are...

Windows’ own update-sharing engine has quietly become the villain in a growing number of user reports: Delivery Optimization (DoSvc) — the peer‑to‑peer service that helps deliver Windows updates and Microsoft Store apps — can incrementally consume large amounts of RAM on some systems, producing...

Windows 11 can feel glossier than lean: that polish comes with a memory cost, but you don't have to accept a sluggish desktop or frequent paging as a fait accompli. This feature explains, verifies, and expands the practical steps that will actually reduce RAM usage in Windows 11 — from trimming...