mscorsvw.exe consumes all system ram

Question

This is really really starting to bug me. I've reloaded this machine twice now with XP SP3 and this S T U P I D process decides to eat all system ram while sitting there doing nothing. All .net components complete with no problems and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this process decides to wig out and consume all system ram making the system useless and requiring a format. Why does it do this? is there a fix for it? Also I see ngen.exe is also another culprit but I'm lost as to why everything installs smoothly yet it does this. Out of 2gig of system ram, mscorsvw.exe will consume it all but have very low cpu usage, if any. What is going on?

System is fully up to date patch wise and latest drivers from the vendor. If anyone can explain this It would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi A_pacman_,

Thank you for your post.

The process mscorsvw.exe is pre-compiling .NET assemblies in the background. After we install the .NET Redist, it will be done with the high priority assemblies in 5 to 10 minutes and then will wait until your computer is idle to process the low priority assemblies. Once it's done, it will go away.
For better understanding of it, please see: http://blogs.msdn.com/davidnotario/archive/2005/04/27/412838.aspx
You can try the workaround mentioned in this blog to solve your issue.

Hopefully this helps!

Have a good weekend.

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

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Answer 2

Hello,

This I completely understand on what this .exe is doing in the background but the problem is... IT DOESN'T STOP...EVER! It sits there, compiling over and over and over for HOURS, even over night, just chewing away at system ram, then stopping for a bit, then starting it all over again. For fun I let it go for a day and it stopped but then all of a sudden, a few days later, it starts itself again, doing the same thing and just eats all system ram, I'm going to take a screen shot next time. It's not fixable and requires a format/reinstall to go back to normal. There is something incompatible but I can't work out what. The only partialfix I found was to DISABLE the clr. net optimization service but that defeats the purpose. I understand it will chew CPU for 10 mins compiling, that's not the issue, the issue is when you see 2gig of system ram completely used by this one process the PC becomes unusable until you kill it, then it starts going again all by itself. Why all the system ram? Is it corrupt? What could the cause for this? Thanks

Answer 3

Hi A_pacman_,

Thank you for your reply.

You're right. Killing this process isn’t a good idea. Thank you for your clarification.

I did some search on the Internet and found that there would be many possible causes for this mscorsvw.exe issue since we're not sure when this process will occur. It usually occurs related to .NET Framework, VS installation, OS or other scenario.

Could you please try the following points to have a try?
- Update your OS
   Be sure to be "patched" up. Windows update (http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com ) finds and installs any critical security "fixes" and patches overall for the Windows OS. It is better overall to keep your system up to date any way to make sure you are protected from any issues.
- If you have install any Visual Studio products, please upgrade them to the latest version (e.g.: install Service Pack)

If the above suggestions don't work, usually, we need to look into the memory dump to know what the cause is.
Typically we need to analyze the memory dump that honestly is hard to do online.
Referring to how to configure and get dump file, please see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/254649 .
Then feedback this issue to MSDN feedback site refers to http://connect.microsoft.com .

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

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Answer 4

Hi,

Well it's done it again. Out of nowhere it's decided to start to do it's stupid process of eating system ram while doing nothing as per usual. The OS is fully patched. The only other .NET apps installed would be Microsoft WSE 2.0 SP3 Runtime.msi and VS C++ Redistributable 2005 which are needed for a particular web app. Here is a screen shot as promised.

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/6223/progw.jpg

The system is unusable right now. The VM goes up and down from say 200meg to 1.5gig then repeats itself when mscorsvw.exe uses CPU. Is this just a huge memory leak in mscorsvw ? This machine was rebuilt recently because of the same issue.

Thanks

Answer 5

Hi A_pacman_,

Thank you for your reply.

Based on your description, it seems that this process appears even you did nothing on your machine.

For your concern, you might try Process Monitor tool http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processmonitor.mspx which can capture the access log.
Filter on the process name mscorsvw.exe in the log so that you see only the related list.
This should give you more info on what are the registry keys/ files being accessed when this situation happens next time.

However, as the better way for further troubleshooting, I would suggest to collect the memory dump. You can follow the steps as I mentioned above and post it to MSDN feedback site. Every feedback submitted will be evaluated carefully by our engineers. They will let you know their comments further through that portal.

Hope this helps! Have a great week.

Best regards,
Yichun Chen

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Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
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