I’m having a weird issue that started right after installing Windows, i seem to have a DWM.EXE memory leak.
I’ve tried the Framework official GPU drivers and the AMD Ones (March 2026 & May 2026 most recently with DDU in safe mode).
The pattern is always the same, i start the computer, the dwm.exe process initialize and after few minutes, bam, goes above and beyond in memory usage (from 1GB to 2,5GB of ram), and it doesn’t occurs on Linux Mint / CachyOS.
For good measure, the Windows was reinstalled (format then install) only a few weeks ago.
If anyone think of a possible cause / solution let me know, so far i’ve tried full system reinstall with formating, full DDU with either Framework’s own drivers or the Amd’s ones and also Installing updates.
Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) is a Microsoft file. It is going to behave completely differently than any Linux window manager in terms of memory consumption. Keep in mind that Microsoft operating systems will use substantially more memory than Linux/Unix operating systems if there is extra memory available.
Being as this system has 32GB of memory the operating system is going to load all kinds of stuff in memory because it sees it has so much available. This is just a different design/programming philosophy of operating systems.
Microsoft tends to load extra things in memory because it is faster to access it from memory than waiting to load it from the storage media (SSD/HDD). It is part of their predictive approach to a smooth operating system for the end user. Much like the prefetching the system has been programmed to do for the last 15 years or so.
@pkunk I appreciate that you’re being educational here, but… Windows caching more things in RAM in the general case is not really germane to the problem. It does not cache things like that in DWM. DWM handles displayable graphical surfaces, and if you do not have many of them you are not going to see a lot of growth in its memory usage unless there is an anomaly.
Anecdotally, I am sitting on a machine (also an AMD 7040-series) with 96GiB of RAM and a fairly long uptime, a bunch of applications open, and having played a few games. DWM is consuming ~350MB of memory.
Your explanation holds when you look at the machine’s memory usage overall, but it doesn’t scale down to the behavior of individual processes as well.
I’m asking because on my main PC (Ryzen 7 7700X - 32GB DDR5 6000MT/S - RX6800 - Same Windows version) i’m hovering at around 100MB for DWM, same for my old laptop (Intel Core i7 8750h - 16GB DDR4 2666MT/S - GTX1060M - Windows 10 Pro), also the mainboard of my FW16 has been replaced by support (for a different issue), both the old MB and the new MB had the same behavior with DWM memory going 2GB+.
Does that mean it is a hardware dependent issue that DWM uses more memory based on the graphics abilities of the system? That does not seem to track with his other system with a bigger graphics card (and an AMD one at that).
Just seems odd that memory consumption of this process would be hardware dependent instead of OS session dependant. It is still plausible that something is corrupted with the fairly fresh install of Windows 11 25H2 and the video card drivers.
The Framework Laptop 16 system I have does not have anything in the expansion bay so it is hard to get a feel for this. Are others having the same issue with the RX7700S and Windows?
Hello again.
I’ve started a ticket with Framework Support related to an External display issue (display disconnecting / reconnecting by itself / crashing), and currently testing the laptop without the dGPU and guess what, dwm.exe stopped its memory leak, it’s sitting between 65 to 150MB of RAM and no unwanted external display disconnect. Sadly the report i’m writing is in french so i don’t think i can put it in the post but i’ve found some weird behavior.
Any vibration, even small like typing on a keyboard can trigger the display disconnect/reconnect/crash.
The behavior can be reproduced by tapping the laptop itself (around the numpad) / moving it slightly (tilting) / flexing slightly (tilting) on the dGPU portion where the stand is.
The dGPU has been reseated and cleaned (dry cleaned once, with isopropyl alcohol once), issue still occuring.
As per support instruction, i’ve tried removing completely the dGPU with External display connected to USB:1 and then USB:4, 4 hours of testing / tapping / using the laptop with USB:1 as external display did not reproduce the issue where it was occuring before.
I’ve tried the official Framework HDMI Adapter, an EssentialB USB-C to VGA and a HAMA USB-C to HDMI adapter, all are working perfectly now (different display tested each with a different cable)