It may be due to high memory usage from background processes or graphics-intensive applications.
It may be due to high memory usage from background processes or graphics-intensive applications.
I've observed that Explorer.exe consumes VRAM on my laptop running Windows 10 with an Nvidia card. The mobile Kepler Quadro uses driver 426, but switching to hybrid graphics resolves the leak while avoiding integrated graphics. It seems the problem is tied to those Nvidia drivers rather than a universal fix. You might want to explore alternatives or updates for the driver instead of relying solely on Intel.
What laptop is it? On my Precision M6700 with i7-3840QM, Quadro K4000 and matching driver release, I enabled Nvidia Optimus in BIOS and configured explorer.exe (in C:\Windows) to utilize the integrated GPU via the Nvidia control panel.
It's an HP Zbook, and yes, enabling the iGPU fixes works, but I prefer not to turn it on. My setup uses a Mux switch that lets me run the OS solely on the Nvidia chip, which triggers the memory leak if I enable the iGPU.
I’ve been investigating this for a while now. There seems to be a memory leak in the desktop explorer.exe process on certain machines, especially when DPI changes are applied. It doesn’t depend on GPU drivers but works around them by hiding the problem from games. I reached out to Renton on Reddit about it, but if anyone else notices similar symptoms—like their desktop setup, shell extensions, or whether they’re using a newer OS version—they can share details. There’s still no fix on a diagnostic startup, even though it disappears on another machine. Someone must have resolved it by altering the default image handler, which also affects the in-use shell thumbnail provider. I haven’t tried that yet and haven’t disabled any extensions either.
Just to clarify, this hasn't been resolved on Windows 10 1904x and 11 21000. It relates to DXGI object leaks connected with the Windows DPI setup inside Explorer.exe. The problem gets worse with displays that vanish or change their EID status during sleep or power-off. I received an estimated time frame when the issue started, around mid-17763 patch cycle, indicating it's been unresolved since at least 1809. The second machine mentioned triggered the issue only after setting a DPI above 150% (175+ at least). DXGI objects would leak repeatedly until the device couldn't be restarted from sleep, and a significant GPU memory was being used. It gets fixed in Windows 11 22h2 and stays fixed in 24h2.
I’m dealing with this problem now. It occurs a few times daily. Just restarting explorer.exe fixes it for another 5 to 6 hours. - 9800x3d - RTX 3070 One thing to mention is that after upgrading my graphics card, CPU, and RAM a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t perform a fresh Windows installation.