Windows 10 Memory and paging file issue

[Quack]

Hello fellow windows users, usually I solve those issues by myself but this one is weird. This is my first post in this forum
Lately I noticed that sometimes when my PC is left alone for a few hours, I come back to many closed\crashed apps for example: Geforce Experience, iCue, Asus GPU tweak, AIsuite and even Chrome while playing youtube.
At first I connected this to a bad GPU OC and decided to clear any settings and reinstall Gpu drivers (with DDU in safe mod)
Since it did not solve anything I decided to check the logs and I found this error showing up in multiple apps:

The paging file is too small for this operation to complete.

and also

Ran out of memory

After inspecting the page file I was shocked because WTF?

Apparently it was set to Automatic and got out of control or something. All those 50GB of pagefile located on my system SSD. I've set it to 8GB

My pc got 16Gb of ram so memory shouldn't be an issue.

Oh and by the way, none of this happened to me while using this PC. Web browsing, gaming for hours and editing videos is stable as a rock.

I'd be happy if someone points me to what to do or check next so I can resolve this W/O formatting my PC.

 

[bochane]

Apparently it was set to Automatic and got out of control or something. All those 50GB of pagefile located on my system SSD. I've set it to 8GB

My pc got 16Gb of ram so memory shouldn't be an issue.

Oh and by the way, none of this happened to me while using this PC. Web browsing, gaming for hours and editing videos is stable as a rock.

I'd be happy if someone points me to what to do or check next so I can resolve this W/O formatting my PC.

The pagefile contains a copy of the virtual memory of all processes curently not active and that is usually a multiple of the size of your physical memory. See the process list and the memory every process is using, add the memory sizes and you have in indication of the size you need. You got the message that 50GB was not enough so you must extend it. I am afraid that a size of 8GB won't be enough.

 

[Quack]

Recommended pagefile size by windows is less than 4GB (for my system)
There's no reason to waste 50GB of precious SSD space on virtual memory and its actually shortening the life of my drive this way.
If I were to exceed my physical memory, then yes i need more virtual memory, but thats not the case.

After digging even deeper and longer into the logs I found that a file named Unpacker.exe were active every time i got a message about low virtual memory. it was hidden in appdata folder. Checked at virustotal, some AV programs reporting this as a miner\trojan.

VirusTotal

VirusTotal

www.virustotal.com

lets see if I can remove it by myself..

 

[bochane]

Keep my fingers crossed, let us know.

 

[Quack]

it is also added itself to the task scheduler.

I dont see any other traces. so deleting it should do the job.


also I found the source and reported it.
Dont do torrents from untrusted sources, kids

 

[bochane]

Once you have removed that job and after a while of normal use, please check the adviced size of the pagefile again. Change the starting size to just over it and the max to let 's say twice that value, so preventing Windows from having to extend it.
Just my thoughts...

 

[Quack]

I've set the virtual memory to 4GB as initial(2.9 recommended) and 16GB max just in case.
After letting my pc idle, I got no more messages regarding virtual memory, so problem solved.

i saved a copy of that file, anyone wanna do some more experiments with it? maybe sniff some packets or something?

 

[bochane]

I am not aware of any program that can analyse and old pagefile, sorry.

I think you did it, nice job.
And welcome to this forum.