July 17th, 2018

What is this vmmem program that is using up all my CPU and memory?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Say you’re minding your own business and you discover that this process called vmmem is using up all your memory and CPU. What is this guy and how do you make him stop?

The vmmem process is a virtual process that the system synthesizes to represent the memory and CPU resources consumed by your virtual machines. In other words, if you see vmmem consuming a lot of memory and CPU resources, then that means your virtual machines are consuming a lot of memory and CPU resources.

If you want to make it stop, shut down your virtual machines.

Bonus chatter: Strictly speaking, what it actually represents is the resources of the other virtual machines, since Windows itself is running in a virtual machine under the hypervisor. You may not be explicitly using the hypervisor, but some other features are built on top of the hypervisor.

Category
Old New Thing
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Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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