Very Slow Paged Pool Leak in Windows NT 4.0 (196745)

SYMPTOMS

After a Windows NT server has been running at least a week, the following event may show up in the System event log:

EVENT: 2020 SOURCE:SRV
TEXT: The server was unable to allocate from the system paged pool because the pool was empty.

Or, by other troubleshooting methods or by using Performance Monitor, you observe that the paged pool memory counter is higher than it has been under previous observations. Observing for several days, you do not observe any real changes but, by observing the system for weeks, the trend is always up.

This leak occurs on servers with many users more than 100 and many groups greater than 10 for each user. It is not related to the relative load on the server.

CAUSE

Under certain conditions, the NetSessionEnum and NetUserGetLocalGroups NET APIs leak memory in both the calling application private bytes and paged pool memory. This leak is very difficult to track down as it is very slow to show up.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows NT 4.0 or Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

152734 How to Obtain the Latest Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. This problem was first corrected in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition, Service Pack 4.