How to get rid of zombie processes without parents in Windows 8

4

1

I'm trying to deal with a zombie problem. Every process I load in Windows 8 sticks around as a zombie.

A couple notes: a restart works, but takes a while. It's a solution, but not my favorite. Zombie processes in my case fill up 16k in the page table and 4k in private memory. All the information I've managed to collect come from Rammap, a system utility.

In Rammap I see a variety of processes:

wuauclt.exe
wsqmcons.exe
WSHost.exe
WOTLauncher.exe
WorldOfTanks.exe
WmiPrvSE.exe
WLMerger.exe
wemgr.exe
...

Big problems are PING.EXE and conhost.exe

This problem forces me to restart my computer once a day to play games at all, and it's quite aggravating. (the games are spawning many PINGs and conhosts)

How can I find out what process(es) to kill in order to get rid of the zombie processes?

Zeus Kabob

Posted 2014-05-12T09:49:56.907

Reputation: 41

1@Raystafarian - the term zombie as used here refers to any process (child or not) that hanged, is not responding, and may be difficult to kill. – Jesse Chisholm – 2015-06-07T16:11:03.123

2

Can you see them in Task Manager and/or Process Explorer?

– Bob – 2014-05-12T10:20:35.923

1You start by Googling for the executable names and making an inventary of what these processe are. Some of the examples you give are perfectly normal and persistent. Note that when Googling executable names, the top results are often to fake pages that do not give much actual information; they are just adverts for (fake) cleanup tools. You may have to go through several search results to get at useful info. – Jan Doggen – 2014-05-12T10:30:23.570

Also, just semantics, but a child process without a parent is an orphan process, not a zombie process. I'm unclear on the usage on the zombie tag, though. – Raystafarian – 2014-05-12T11:05:18.350

Thanks for the comments. I can only find them in Rammap. The executables are all perfectly ordinary processes that I run. The problem is when there are hundreds of dead (or orphan) processes using 20kb of memory apiece. – Zeus Kabob – 2014-05-12T15:56:19.390

Answers

3

In Windows a zombie process is often the result of a buggy driver - and that would be my first suspect, especially with so many unrelated processes remaining. Check out Cannot end Windows 7 Process, even tried pskill and Why do some process stay in Task Manager after they've been killed? for additional information.

Check for driver updates. I would pay particular attention to graphics and networking drivers. You might be able to remove those drivers and see if it helps.

Especially if this is a recent issue, you can try reverting anything that has changed. System Restore tends to work reasonably well for undoing driver installations.

Bob

Posted 2014-05-12T09:49:56.907

Reputation: 51 526

I have no idea how long this issue has persisted, but I've had problems with "unaccounted for" memory for a while. I'll try updating my drivers, and I'll get back to you on how it works. – Zeus Kabob – 2014-05-12T15:57:51.260

I updated all drivers that I could; turned out only to be a webcam driver, Intel HD 4000 driver update, and a bluetooth driver. I also installed some non-vital windows updates. After the updates and a full system restart, the issue persists (tested by running ping 350 times. All instances remain in the page table). – Zeus Kabob – 2014-05-13T06:50:44.557

Asked: 2014-05-12T09:49:56.907

Viewed: 13 022 times

Active: 2014-06-24T01:16:41.113