KB5031445 – preview – addresses ctfmon memory leak

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I learned of the Win 10 preview update KB5031445 recently.  It addresses a few things, including some fixes for touchscreens and a fix for ctfmon’s long standing memory leak.

There is some possibility or causing problems with bitlocker reporting – but (supposedly) no impact on bitlocker functionality.

Anyone try this preview update?  I’m thinking of giving it a shot but I thought I’d reach out before doing so.

I use a KVM to share a keyboard, mouse & monitor between two Win 10 PCs.  I switch back & forth a lot in a day.  Apparently, every time I switch between systems the bug in ctfmon is triggered and it leaks some memory.  I’ve known about this bug for a couple years (!) and mitigate the issue by rebooting the systems every morning.  If I don’t do this then, after a 2 or 3 days, one or both of the systems will start bogging down due to low memory.

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We don’t recommend installing previews unless you are prepared to restore from a backup image. Wait for others to test the updates.

What do you do that causes the memory leak? I’ve not seen it on any of my W10 machines.

cheers, Paul

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Wait for others to test the updates.
Let eok be that ‘other’ lol

Cheers

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Heh, heh… I’ll wait.

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Every time keyboard focus changes, ctfmon leaks some memory.  If I leave my PCs “always on” then ctfmon leaks enough memory to bring system performance to a crawl and/or a hang/crash.  This is on two Win 10 systems with 32GB of memory.  Takes about 4-7 days in my case.  Impact varies based on use cases.

As I said in my original post, I use two Win 10 systems that share a monitor+keyboard+mouse via a KVM.  I switch back and forth between the systems several times per day.  Each time I switch, keyboard focus is changed, ctfmon is “triggered” and it leaks some memory.

My “workaround” is to just power-off the PCs at the end of each work day & power ’em up the following work day.  Ctfmon still leaks memory each day, but – due to powering the PCs up/down every 24hrs – not enough in a day to cause major problems.  But I absolutely hate having to jump through any kind of hoops due to a bug that should have been patched years ago.

 

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forget about the KB5031445 update now. it has been recently superseded/replaced by the KB5032189 security update released Tuesday November 14.

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