Windows 10: Memory leak, possible malware

My mom was trying to install TurboTax on the computer I built her this morning, but it was saying she didn't have enough memory (needed 2048 MB). I knew that shouldn't be the case because I installed 8 GB of RAM when I built it.

Well, when I looked at the task manager I saw something like 85% of the computers memory was in use (even though the numbers didn't seem to actually add up to that). Firefox was using the most memory, at about 300 MB, so I took a look. That's when I noticed several suspicious add-ons for searching for recipes. I deleted all of those but I wrote down the names first:

• Search and Print Recipes Search
• Forms Search
• Manuals Library Search
• Recipes Search
• Yahoo Search from PDF to DOC
• New Custom Tab
• Print Recipes Search

The last two, New Custom Tab and Print Recipes Search, were already disabled by Firefox because of obfuscated code. So I figured my mom had installed some malware.

So I did a scan with Windows Virus and Threat Protection, nothing found. I installed MalwareBytes and did a complete scan with that, also nothing found.

After some Googling I figured maybe Firefox just also had a coincidental memory leak or something, so I went to about:memory in the browser and clicked on both the GC and CC buttons to free memory. That seemed to do a little something, now the task manager was only showing about 74% memory usage. When I close all programs it still shows 54% usage.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. I assume there's some malware somewhere that I couldn't detect with my scans and it's locking up memory? Or maybe it is just a coincidental memory leak somewhere?

Anyone have any advice?

submitted by /u/phil_davis
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:)

 

Possible Memory Leaks in Windows 10

A memory leak occurs when an application closes and fails to release all its RAM back to the operating system.

The first step in dealing with a memory leak is to determine which application is leaking memory.

The next step is to contact that application's technical support with complete details of the memory leak, since the developers will want to fix the problem ASAP.

 

Memory leak issue

The term "memory leak" means that an application fails to return all its RAM to the operating system when it exits. The leftover RAM is unusable to the operating system.

Step one is to identify the application that is leaking memory. Step two is to contact the application's developers and provide as much detailed data on the memory leak as you can. For example: which processes are still in RAM after the application exits
and how much RAM they occupy. Application developers never want their applications to leak memory and they will be grateful for the details you provide, particularly if they can replicate the leak on their own computers.

 

Power Toys run memory leak

There's nothing that anyone here can do about a memory leak. Only the developers of leaking software can fix leaks in their software. This is a community forum. I suggest posting your issue on MSDN.