SD 7 causes memory leak with Win 7 x64

[tumyumgug]

I installed SD 7 on win 7 64 bit and it causes a non paged memory leak at a rate of 1 MB/sec thus increasing the Physical memory till it reaches 90% and crashes the computer. I have tried SD with the Kernel compatabilty enabled and disabled with no success. I have tried reinstallation about 4 times, downloading again with no success. There appears to be a conflict between SD 7, windows 7 and possibly another program.

[AChen]

Hi tumyumgug,

What other secuirty programs do you have installed?
Could you try disabling Behavior Guard and see if this resolves the problem. You will need to disable this in either MyAccount (http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48180) or you can send your license code to me via a Private Message and I can assist you with this. I can't seem to recreate this on my Win7 64 with SDA (all plugins and IntelliGuards enabled). I'm currently trying to test an Adobe issue reported in another thread. Once you get back, I will give this a go with a similar environment to yours and see how this goes.

[tumyumgug]

BitDefender Internet Security 2010 is the AV program. I tried SD with nothing else enabled. Even when SD is shutdown the memory keeps steadily clicking away.

[ErikLarsson]

Does it still leak if you uninstall SD?

[tumyumgug]

Apparently, I wasn't clear enough. On the four or five complete installs, every time I remove SD the leak stops. When reinstalled leak begins, thus I can attribute it to SD.Even if SD is not running in the toolbar, and the computer is just sitting at idle, the leak continues. Removal of SD stops problem. I think it may be a SD driver running in the background consuming memory, because even if you start computer in diagnostic mode, the leak is still evident.

[ErikLarsson]

I think i had this too but on vista 64x, I had SD installed and lost some Gb each day then i reinstalled vista and installed everything i had including SD then the loss of memory stopped.

Tho this is nothing i recommend IF it would turn out there is another way.

[AChen]

Could you send us a Belarc report? Please see http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61505 for more info. I will send a PM with my email details.

[tumyumgug]

Do you want SD installed when the Belarc report is run? I currently have unstalled it because it crashes the computer after an hour due to the memory leak. What is a PM?

[ErikLarsson]

A personal message or private message, often shortened to PM.

[katie]

Do you want SD installed when the Belarc report is run? I currently have unstalled it because it crashes the computer after an hour due to the memory leak. What is a PM?

No you don't have to install SD. It will show all the other programs that are installed on your computer and other information which PC tools can use to check out what could be the cause of the problem you are experiencing. To check your PM, look to the top right hand corner and you will see "Your Notifications".

[nedsram]

When I reboot, I see that pctsSvc consumes a relatively large amount of memory while processes start up. This is reasonable, and normally after a while the memory usage returns to a lower level. However every so often, the amount of memory it consumes seems to increase slowly but continuously to the point where it consumes the entire available memory (in my case 3gb). At some point the PC starts to thrash, and eventually locks solid with the disk light on continuously. I am then forced to do a manual reset.

This happened earlier today. I monitored the memory usage with Process Explorer for as long as I could, but then Process Explorer stopped responding.

This suggests that under certain circumstances pctsSvc leaks memory. I have an 8-core i7 running 64 bit Vista with 3gb of RAM. When I rebooted with the same processes starting up, it booted normally. So if there is a memory leak, it's intermittent. After boot-up is complete, it normally uses less than 50% of the available memory.

I have another problem which has surfaced since I upgraded to SD-AV 2010. I have two processes that still start up, but now fail to display the expected icon in the system tray until I restart then from Process Explorer. These are NetMeter and AutoHotKey. I'll add them to the white list and see if this resolves the problem. These are not spyware, although I can see why it might think that AutoHotKey was a key logger.

[AChen]

Hi Guys,

Could you please try disabling Email Guard, Site Guard and Behavior Guard within your subscription and see if this resolves the memory leak issues? You can send me your license code via a PM and I can temporarily do this for you.

Also, what is the Kernel Compatibility mode set to?

[tumyumgug]

As I wrote in the first mail on this, I tried it with both the Kernel compatability enabled and disabled, and still the memory leak. I disabled each of the items you mentioned and enabled and disabled the kernel for each one until I had all three disabled and tried enable and disable of the kernel. Still the memory leak issue. There is definite problem with this version of SD and windows 7-64 bit.

[tumyumgug]

It's been a month and since sending the report and a screenshot of the memory leak, I have not a response or resolution. I do see many similar posts about Win 7 PC's locking up etc, apparently these folks are experiencing the same problem but are unaware that SD is causing a memory leak. Any progress with this issue would be greatly appereciated.

[dingo44]

I'm sorry but there is not that much that can be done at the moment because AChen is gone for awhile. could you check that you are using the latest version of spyware doctor http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61050

if you still have problems you have to pm "support" or "bwu"

from dingo44:)

[tumyumgug]

I have downloaded the latest issue and the same problem exists. Obviously, after all this time no one is going to look into this problem and from the other posts it's evident I'm not the only one experience. Better I stop using Spyware doctor and subscribe to Webroot Spysweeper whose application works flawlessly with Windows 7 and my system. Thanks for nothing.

[haapy]

Did you try uninstalling/disabling Bit Defender to see if there was a conflict with SD?

[alpha12]

Iam running Spyware Doctor 7.0.0.514(kernel compatbility on) on windows 7 64 bit so far i am having no big issue at all with other anti-malware and antivirus,my config :
Prevx v3.0.5.48 64 bit(realtime)
Avira Antivir Pro 32 bit(realtime)
A-squared Antimalware 32 bit(realtime)

and i am running cleanmem : http://www.pcwintech.com/node/145 which probably reduce the memory usage of SD?all 4 SD processes run on around 32 mb memory :),

try to exclude SD processes on bitdefender exclusion list :


pctsAuxs.exe
pctsGui.exe
pctsSvc.exe
pctsTray.exe

it seem the main culprit is bitdefender,bitdefender known for it's memory usage