Peter86

I tried v9, and downgraded back to v8. The new firewall rule editor is so awkward, it was a deal breaker for me.

I have 8.0.319 in XP SP3 and using pre-release updates. You can check my posts in this thread and you'll see that I was kinda affected -> not affected -> affected -> and now I am not affected by the leak again. Been fine for the last 1 and ½ month. Ekrn.exe stays within it's normal (for v8 IMO) range between 120-130mb. I have never seen it consume e.g 150-200mb like Marcos suggests under any circumstances, except when there is a leak, and then it doesn't stop at 200 but slowly goes up up up. It doesn't matter how hard I try to make the leak reveal itself again, ekrn.exe's ram usage just stays normal no matter what. Haha I don't believe this, it is back again. ekrn.exe use 180mb right now, but reached as high as 690mb yesterday. Internet protection module: 1242 (20160114) Since downgrading back to ESS 8 (production v. 8.0.319.0) the memory leak has NOT reoccurred at all. Still running XP sp3 (for a bit longer). If it helps at all, here is the installed components list. Virus signature database: 13034 (20160215) Rapid Response module: 7517 (20160215) Update module: 1060 (20150617) Antivirus and antispyware scanner module: 1478 (20160121) Advanced heuristics module: 1167 (20160128) Archive support module: 1245 (20160118) Cleaner module: 1114 (20151004) Anti-Stealth support module: 1093 (20151216) Personal firewall module: 1289.2 (20151215) Antispam module: 1029 (20141103) ESET SysInspector module: 1257 (20151113) Real-time file system protection module: 1010 (20150806) Translation support module: 1448 (20160112) HIPS support module: 1211 (20160120) Internet protection module: 1173.15 (20160125) Web content filter module: 1046 (20150925) Advanced antispam module: 3250 (20160215) Database module: 1072 (20150831) LiveGrid communication module: 1017 (20140415) Specialized cleaner module: 1010 (20141118)

I'm commonly seeing sustained memory usage between 350-450MB. Occasionally it almost reaches 1GB. Then I have no choice but to reboot to clear it. I'm running XPsp3 with 2GB RAM so I can't afford this nuisance. I'll be downgrading back to ESS8, till this problem gets sorted out.

AFAIK, there is no fix for this yet. All you can do is reboot to clear the memory. My workaround is to add TMP to the exclusion list. I had hoped to add %temp%\fla*.tmp to be more specific, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that for Real-time protection.

I finally found the cause of my memory leak (well, at least the major one)! Many video streaming sites use Flash Player and VideoJS, creating a temporary video file (usually fla*.tmp) in the %temp% folder. I observed ekrn.exe memory usage growing while the video was downloaded. The tmp file remains open the entire time, until you close the video. After closing the web page containing the video, the old fla*.tmp file is deleted, but ekrn.exe does not release the memory it had used. If I reload the same video, a new fla*.tmp file is created, and ekrn.exe memory grows again. If you want to test this, try this page: hxxp://www.wimp.com/tourfrance/ I am using Windows XP sp3, Firefox v42.0, SmartSecurity v9.0.318.0