8

I'm working on a busy Windows 2008R2 Terminal Server where a particular user's Outlook session consumes between 2GB and 4GB of RAM.

The process doesn't appear to be a slow memory leak, as the RAM is utilized almost immediately after the process opens.

To date I've tried the following:

  • Logging into the user's session and checking out their Outlook settings. There's nothing abnormal. Default mail quotas are in place, the user only has 5,000 mailbox items. Quota is 3GB. User is using 1.2GB. Inbox is nearly empty. Deleted Items are pruned well.
  • Outlook in Safe Mode. No difference.
  • Removing Add-ins. No difference.
  • Creating a new Outlook profile. No difference.
  • Opening the user's mailbox from another account. No difference.
  • Moving the user to a different terminal server. No change.

At this point, the user's Outlook RAM usage is 10x-20x that of any other user. Is there anything else I should look at?

Process information and stats via NewRelic: enter image description here

Task Manager: enter image description here

Process Explorer: enter image description here

Edit:

VMMAP output:

enter image description here

After emptying "Working Set":

enter image description here

ewwhite
  • 194,921
  • 91
  • 434
  • 799
  • Have you tried a different user profile on the same machine versus new profile of the problematic user on a different machine to see if it's the same result? – Lex Feb 07 '16 at 22:40
  • what is his ost size (in AppData/Local)? contacts and autocomplete size? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2759052 – Jacob Evans Feb 07 '16 at 23:36
  • @JacobEvans This is an RDS server, so the users connect to Exchange in Online mode. There's no OST file. – ewwhite Feb 08 '16 at 01:15
  • What if you open his mailbox from your user account, same ram issue or vise versa if the user opens a different mailbox via second profile. – Jacob Evans Feb 08 '16 at 01:29
  • @JacobEvans Opening the user's mailbox from another account does not show increased RAM consumption. – ewwhite Feb 08 '16 at 01:49
  • 2
    and if that user opens outlook without a profile, or another mailbox profile? – Jacob Evans Feb 08 '16 at 02:11
  • 1
    Can't help you, but I know there are two more tools by Russinovich that could be of help: RAMMAP and VMMAP (has nothing to do with virtual machines). – Daniel Feb 09 '16 at 10:41
  • Looking at the graph it seem there is a precise moment when the memory usage jump from 2Gb to 4Gb, maybe you can use ProcMon to check what Outlook is doing when the memory usage is growing. – Max Feb 09 '16 at 20:16
  • I know it is a poor man's solution, but did you reboot the server? – 030 Feb 12 '16 at 23:14

3 Answers3

2

I had a user with a very similar issue years ago. The problem was caused by an external calendar. Try removing any/all external calendars.

In Outlook's Calendar Tab:

  1. Record the URLs of any externally hosted calendars
  2. Un-check the box next to any external calendar
  3. Right-click each of those calendars and select "Delete Calendar"

Watch the memory footprint as you remove. If it drops significantly after removing one, you'll know the culprit. Simply re-add the calendars that play nicely.

I don't have sufficient reputation to leave comments yet, so I had to go Jeopardy-style and pose my question in the form of an answer... sorry if this is totally irrelevant.

sippybear
  • 2,997
  • 1
  • 12
  • 12
  • Thank you! I'm going to check this out as soon as I get to the terminal. – ewwhite Feb 13 '16 at 02:28
  • Could you explain why it was caused bu an external calendar? – 030 Feb 13 '16 at 19:17
  • In my user's case, the external calendar linked to other calendars which were linked to other calendars... It's speculation, but I think it was something about recursing through the nested calendars that caused Outlook to consume tons of RAM. I only offered this as a solution because the situation sounded similar and I lack the reputation to post comments. Sorry! – sippybear Feb 13 '16 at 22:51
  • @sippybear I checked. No calendars linked. There were empty public folders tied the account, but I also removed the Public Folder database to no avail. – ewwhite Feb 15 '16 at 12:56
  • @ewwhite Sorry this didn't work! Assuming you have access to the mail (Exchange?) server, have you tried migrating the mail from the user's mailbox into a temporary account? – sippybear Feb 17 '16 at 23:18
2

I can't really explain why, but this issue only happens with a 64-bit edition of Outlook. Downgrading to 32-bit Outlook solves it.

ewwhite
  • 194,921
  • 91
  • 434
  • 799
pauska
  • 19,532
  • 4
  • 55
  • 75
0

If the user added a new external imap or pop mail account it is possible that this is the initial sync process, which can take several hours for very large mailboxes depending on the cache settings.

Both the email server and client have separate caching settings that can reduce this load on newly mapped email accounts.

youcantexplainthat
  • 215
  • 1
  • 2
  • 11