All of our HP ProBook 440 / 540 G8 laptops experiencing lagging / slow / stuttering as of April 2022

[FrankOH]

The only thing that has worked consistently for us is upgrading from Win10 to Win11.  The regedit with changing the NDU setting to 4 worked on 1 or 2 computers, not the rest.  I just tried yesterday on a machine with the problem disabling the Fortmedia service.  I'm waiting to see if that solves it without any side affects.

[ICEMANhalo96]

We stayed on Windows 10 and disabled the FMAPOService and it worked.

[FrankOH]

Thanks!  Following up on my comment from yesterday, I checked with the person with Win10 that we just disabled the Fortmedia service ... she said her computer has been running great for the past two days.  So, to recap, disabling the Fortmedia service or upgrading to Win11 works for us.  This issue caused people a lot of headaches though.

[ArnoutBoer]

Hi,

I was able to reproduce this problem on a bare Windows 10 installation, without our AV solution (SentinelOne). We prevent registry access via GPO. I used the following steps:

• base install Windows 10 (SW_DVD9_Win_Pro_10_21H2.6_64BIT_English_Pro_Ent_EDU_N_MLF_X23-13803.ISO)
• blocked registry via gpedit.msc
• Installed HP support tool (withou internet access)
• Disabled Windows Update service
• Connect to Internet
• Let HP support tools run twice
• Enable Windows update and install all updates. This includes a Fortemedia update

Reproduce

• Install Teams
• Teams 'meet now' with myself.
• After +/- 4 hours memory is 100%. You can watch it grow.

Troubleshoot

• In taskmgr there isn't a process with high RAM.
• After restarting the service FMAPOService RAM usage is back to normal.
• Via poolmon the probleem seems to be in the 'Toke' memory pool.
• I used handle.exe. to find that the process FMService64 is leaking handles.
• I used procmon to see what happens if I allow registry access. You can see amongs others the command  C:\Windows\system32\regini.exe C:\Windows\system32\k900_type_0_restore.txt being run under the user (not SYSTEM) account Apperantly FMService64 (running under SYSTEM) fires up a local user process. SOmething like that shows up in windbg.)

Please let me know your findings.

[ArnoutBoer]

Hi,

I was able to reproduce this problem on a bare Windows 10 installation, without our AV solution (SentinelOne). We prevent registry access via GPO. I used the following steps:

• base install Windows 10
• blocked registry via gpedit.msc
• Installed HP support tool (without internet access)
• Disabled Windows Update service
• Connect to Internet
• Let HP support tools run twice
• Enable Windows update and install all updates. This includes a Fortemedia update

Reproduce

• Install Teams
• Teams 'meet now' with myself.
• After +/- 4 hours memory is 100%. You can watch it grow.

Troubleshoot

• In taskmgr there isn't a process with high RAM.
• After restarting the service FMAPOService RAM usage is back to normal.
• Via poolmon the probleem seems to be in the 'Toke' memory pool.
• I used handle.exe. to find that the process FMService64 is leaking handles.
• I used procmon to see what happens if I allow registry access. You can see amongs others the command  C:\Windows\system32\regini.exe C:\Windows\system32\k900_type_0_restore.txt being run under the user (not SYSTEM) account Apperantly FMService64 (running under SYSTEM) fires up a local user process. SOmething like that shows up in windbg.)

Please let me know your findings.

[DBAETEN]

Hi,
We also have this on our G8 machines.
We run Sentinel One as an AV.

[janwillem_v]

OMG! I thought I was going mad! 
I had difficulties what the exact issue was. My thoughts was a memory leak. I reinstalled multiple machines... updated everything... new BIOS releases... reinstalled again and again... 

Noticed this issue for a long time now. Nice to read how to resolve. Weird thing is that I also asked HP support (second tier) and the problem was not known back then. 

[JPless]

We're experiencing the same issue with multiple Probook 450 G8's.  I reached out to HP support yesterday and they too advised to uninstall the current Realtek Audio Driver and install the latest one from their website.  Has this fix been permanent on your machines or has the 99% memory problem returned on any of them?  

[FMUSA]

The issue is partially caused by a recent WU item.  There is a workaround that's in final validation, and it should be made available shortly.  Please monitor the hp support website for upcoming updates on the audio driver package.

[JPless]

Is this the driver that contains the fix?  Driver - HP ProBook 450 G8 Notebook PC (1A896AV) | HP® Customer Support