Rundll32 high memory usage freezing computer

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I  have an HP Probook 470 G4 running version 1809 17763.592 although the problem may have started earlier.

For the last month or so, the computer has been freezing every few minutes for up to 15 seconds, making it very hard to do anything.  From task manager, I saw that memory usage was around 80%, the main culprit being rundll32 using about 50% of the memory, i.e. up to 4Mb.

I upgraded the RAM from 8Mb to 16Mb and got a vast improvement when the machine is first booted up – say 200Mb memory usage by rundll32.    For the first few hours after a reboot, no freezing at all.  However, over the course of the day, rundll32 memory usage increases to 4Mb, typical memory use increases from 30-40% to 80% and the computer starts to freeze again.

So I have to reboot at least once a day to get rundll32 memory usage down.  Any ideas what is the problem??

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David1920 wrote:

I  have an HP Probook 470 G4 running version 1809 17763.592 although the problem may have started earlier.

For the last month or so, the computer has been freezing every few minutes for up to 15 seconds, making it very hard to do anything.  From task manager, I saw that memory usage was around 80%, the main culprit being rundll32 using about 50% of the memory, i.e. up to 4Mb.

I upgraded the RAM from 8Mb to 16Mb and got a vast improvement when the machine is first booted up – say 200Mb memory usage by rundll32.    For the first few hours after a reboot, no freezing at all.  However, over the course of the day, rundll32 memory usage increases to 4Mb, typical memory use increases from 30-40% to 80% and the computer starts to freeze again.

So I have to reboot at least once a day to get rundll32 memory usage down.  Any ideas what is the problem??

You have first to identify which app/process is using that rundll32.exe
The best way to do this is using Microsoft’s Process Explorer a free portable tool : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer.

Process Explorer how-to Geek : https://www.howtogeek.com/school/sysinternals-pro/lesson2/

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Many thanks for your help.  I managed to identify that HPStatusBl.dll was the culprit.  It is part of the HP software for my Officejet printer and it monitors the inkjet  levels in the printer, which is hardly a critical function as there is a option on the printer to check the ink levels.  I found other comments on the web about its high memory usage and that disabling it appears to have no effect other than creating an error message on start up.  After running all night, rundll32.exe is using 1.2Mb of memory rather than several gigabytes….  My other laptop, a Surface Book, also has the same software but rundll32 is only using a few Mb of memory at any time.

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For printers, about the only thing you really need running in the background is your scanning software. And you could probably get by without that running if you are willing to take an extra step or two when you want to do a scan.

HP and others like to run a bunch of stuff in the background for their multi-function devices (printer/scanner/copier). I have a Canon multi-function device, and it installed a menu which always runs in the background. I killed the auto-loading of the Canon menu, and as far as I can tell, I’m doing just fine without the Canon menu running in the background.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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