WDFME.exe RAM hog

It’s all good. I was typing quickly to get the post out and wasn’t thinking much about grammar. I couldn’t solve this issue so I made myself a work around. I uninstalled the WD smartware software and started using windows backup to backup to my WD 1TB drive. I had one issue with this and that was I needed to turn off my AV to finish the backup without getting an error code with windows backup. Maybe I will come back and use WD smartware software if they ever fix it.

Once I uninstalled the WD Smartware software the computer was back running great.

You cant do anything on your machine if you have the WD software installed.

Peace

This seems to have brought down the CPU utilization mine was 36 percent just for this process now after disabling the VSS and restarting the WD engine it is almost zero.It spiked back to 50 percent after about 5 minutes but went down pretty soon. I will be monitoring this process for a few days.Also does disabling  the VSS process not cause any other problem.

  1. Is Bit Locker turned on?
  2. Are you backing up encrypted files/folders?
  3. Are you backing up compressed files/folders?
  4. Can you also collect the list of VSS providers that are installed on the systems and provide? From an administrative command prompt type:  vssadmin list providers
  5. Are your source partitions are Fat32, exFat, or external USB drives?'

As you can tell from my name, I’m neither a CompEng or Software writer:  I’m one of the ‘standard customers’ who wants their items to work right the first time.

  1.  Dunno.  Don’t care.  Shouldn’t matter if you did it right the first time.

  2. Yes  (in that I told it to back everything up).

  3. Yes (see #2 comment).

  4. Have no idea what this means.  I would guess that it is whatever the factory default is.

Running an HP with Vista64, Turion Dual Core XM Mobile RM-72 → 4GB, use Chrome for my browser, have updated to the latest version of WD (the installer says so) and Microsoft NET (and that’s about all I know about computers - these are regurgitated facts, I don’t really know what they mean).

Any time I boot up, WD takes up to 88% of the memory at any given time.

Yes, I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled it:  that helped the problem for about 20 minutes.

How come it is acceptable for the computing community (pointing an irritated finger at lots of firms here) to release what seems to be alpha or beta ware as finished product and expect it to be acceptable?

Shabs,

My understanding is that disabling the VSS will most likely mean you will lose your Windows restore points.

Particularly if you run defrag software like diskeeper.

With Diskeeper, you need to set the defrag options to VSS friendly in order to retain Windows restore points.

I am also having the memory issue.  I have a fairly new HP Pavilion quad core processor, 12 gig RAM, nothing encrypted, nothing compressed, I’m running Windows 7 Professional so bitlocker isn’t an option.  The  WDFME.exe on about a half dozen occasions in the last three weeks will consume all my memory.  I’m running version 1.5.1.6   -  If I stop the WDFME service my used memory goes from 95% used down to 22%.   It’s a pain in the neck when I’m not able to stop the service fast enough and it takes minutes to go from screen to screen.

fyi.  clicking  the SOFTWARE UPDATE button under HELP gives no indication of anything and doesn’t appear to do anything.  Next time my memory usage is rocketing towards 96% used I’ll take some screen shots. 

I have tried and tried and am not wasting anymore time on WD products, hardware is fine software is just junk. how can WD get it so wrong. nothing in support pages for this fault, only in the community.

i have just unistalled WD software and am going to find something else , what a joke for a such a large company.

If WD are not going to help the customers than why would i or all my community buy.???

I posted earlier in this thread ( http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-Smartware/WDFME-exe-RAM-hog/m-p/350367#M4409)..) I ended up buying a Mac which doesn’t need WDs software to backup. I guess this could be considered a fix.  An expensive fix. haha.

just an fyi - again I’m locked up.  10.2 gig of 12 total being used on WDFME.  Does this have something to do with Oracle Virtual Box at all?   Does anyone else here run virtual machines?

I’ll beat that!  10.2 gig used on WDFME

Installed the MyBookLive 02.10.12-129 : Core F/W firmware update today (the NAS automatically restarted as it should with the new firmware)

Rebooted the PC

Within 45 minutes the WDFME process was using 72% of my available RAM (8Gb - Win7 64bit Dell XPS 8300 i7 2600)

Had to stop the WDFME process so I could use my PC to work on…

When will a SmartWare / WDFME update be coming out?

This is intolerable and has been going on for over 9 months now

Please, please FIX this major issue

I had the same issue. WDFME would creep up its use of memory to the maximum memory available, then the system would slow down to a crawl.  I have 8G of RAM, Windows 7 (64)

Here is what I did. 

  1. Turn my virus protection OFF and stop the Smartware automatic back-up function.

  2. Disable all WD services. (3)

  3. Uninstall WD Smartware

  4. Restart the computer

  5. Download and install the latest Smartware version

  6. Restart the computer

  7. Enable the WD services if not enabled already.

  8. Restart the computer and turn the Virus protection back ON.

  9. Restart the WD Smartware automatic back-up function.

So far so good. …

Good luck.

Many thanks, Lucky_Phil. I followed the steps in your post and I’ve reclaimed control of my computer’s resources from wdfm.exe. Two additional icons on my desktop and manual starting and stopping of wdfm services has proved a better solution for me than simply uninstalling the software. I like the convenience of WD’s file backup. I still hope that WD might provide an update that solves the problem of resource-hogging. I can’t for the life of me understand why it is taking them so long.

Lucky_Phil’s post is on page 10 of this thread.

“I can’t for the life of me understand why it is taking them so long”

That’s simple. They either don’t care, or don’t know how to fix their own software, otherwise they would have made this a priority.

Hi peeps,

try 1.5.4.5 Smartware it doesn’t use so much RAM.

John

I had the same problem with my  My Book Essential and after turning on my computer it started to use more and more ram till it reached max (8GB). My system is Windows 7 64-bit. 

I manually turned of WDFME.exe on each startup for some few months and even the latest update didn’t fix it. 

So here the stepst that fixed it:

  • I formated the WD drive
  • uninstalled WD Smartware completely
  • Restarted computer
  • Installed Smwatwrare again and restarted computer again
  • Setup automatic backup

Now it is almost a week and haven’t seen this RAM usage problema again.

Hope this helps 

The new version of Smartware is 1.5.4.8 and was released 3/20/2012. I updated my flashplayer and jave as per WD directions and then installed the new update. I called WD and they talked me through the entire process.  My CPU went from 70-80% to less than 4%. To be on the safe side, if I am running allot of programs, I unplug the drive. After I plug it in, it backsup any data I added.

yep - updated yesterday to the latest version of smartware (1.5.4.5 - NOT 1.5.4.8 for my LiveBook)

the previous week I had also done the firmware update - not sure if they are linked

the software is a bit silly in that the SmartWare Backup tab is greyed out UNTIL you click on the Home tab, and then the LiveBook icon…

Memory usage has now maxed out at c 2.5Gb RAM (out of 8Gb RAM) so this is a huge improvement (wdfme used to use c. 7Gb RAM) - I never had a CPU issue

IMPROVEMENT!! (at long last)

Apologies - I typed too SOON - the SmartWare RAM Hog Issue still exists

Left my PC running all evening and night (11 hours) - when I checked it out this morning, RAM Usage was back up to 99%

Cancelled the WDFME Process and RAM Usage dropped to 9% (this is an 8Gb RAM i7 Win7 Prof PC)

Seems like the Smartware Upgrade has NOT fixed the memory hog issue

(Just taking Smartware a bit longer to hog all of the memory on the PC)

Another words of thanks to the Lucky_Phil post (page 10), and a related note.   It works well for me … but only if I run the stop and start .cmd files as Administrator.

I also appreciate Watchful’s tips (page 13), which showed me how to set WDFMEService to manual in Control Panel.

A couple of questions from those two posts - In msconfig, in the Startups is WDDMstatus.exe.  In the Services tab, there are WDRulesService, WDFMEService, and WDDMSerivce.  Which of these should remain turned on, and which can be turned off, if you don’t keep your WD backup drive continuously connected to your PC? 

Thanks,  Daddy Schlich