Orphan/Ghost Processes Buildup Over Time

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Orphans and/or ghost processes appear to slowly accumulate over time. This has been happening for quite some time (for several years,) but I didn’t really look into it until recently to try and actually figure it out, as I initially thought it was a different program that caused the issue. I’ve had this problem on two completely different computers, as I upgraded to a whole new system between when this started and now.

Long story short, I tried many different methods to release the memory being reserved for these Brave processes, but nothing works. The only program that can even see them is RAMMap, as commands like taskkill and Stop-Process (Kill by process ID) don’t even recognize that there are any processes by the name of Brave, Brave.exe, or the ID’s they display (I made sure to have the browser shut down before trying all these commands so only the ghost processes were ‘active’.) Along with other methods I’ve tried. Windows doesn’t even see them either, but there is a clear effect on the amount of ram being reserved. Using several administrative tools Microsoft provides like the power toys does nothing. They can’t see them and neither can the Brave task manager.

Below are some images. Image 1 is the ram usage from my system fresh from boot. Image 2 is my system about 5-6 days later with no additional programs active at that time. Image 3 is RAMMap showing the ghost processes belonging to Brave. They do not disappear when the program is shut down. Resetting the system is the only way for these processes to be cleared.

Memory 1
Memory 1660×379 7.79 KB

Memory 2
Memory 2662×385 7.71 KB

Memory 3
Memory 3578×406 5.93 KB

How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Leave a computer on with brave open for roughly a week. Try with a few different websites open without any energy saver or memory saving settings on. Also have the machine never go to sleep mode. Having the display turn off with inactivity is acceptable.
  2. Check back after about 5-6 days.

Expected result:
When I close Brave, for all memory allocated to it and sub processes be released. Also for memory to not gradually rise over time when there is no activity.

Brave Version( check About Brave):
1.71.114

Additional Information:
When Brave is shut down, all the ram it uses is released except for these ghost processes, so the ram usage usually decreases by a few GB’s. I’ve experienced the ram usage going as high as 73 GB’s for commit charge just recently. Luckily I have page pool memory for this kind of situation.

My machine is set to never enter sleep mode since it usually causes issues upon waking. I don’t know if this plays a part of it, but I feel that it probably does. I don’t seem to experience this activity on my phone despite not restarting or turning off my phone for weeks at a time, which is why it’s likely just the desktop versions issue.

One reason I know this isn’t caused by user activity is that I work 12 hours shifts Monday-Wednesday. I usually restart Sunday night so the ram pool refreshes, then the ram usage is much higher by Thursday when I can properly get on my computer. I check in to look at my email or bank in-between days, so I can see the ram usage is higher with each day despite me having done effectively nothing. Usually leaving the same three tabs open the entire duration of the machines.

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You might have run afoul of (and are inadvertently messing with):

“Chromium uses multiple processes to protect the overall application from bugs and glitches in the rendering engine or other components. It also restricts access from each rendering engine process to other processes and to the rest of the system. In some ways, this brings to web browsing the benefits that memory protection and access control brought to operating systems.”

" We refer to the main process that runs the UI and manages renderer and other processes as the "browser process " or “browser.” Likewise, the processes that handle web content are called “renderer processes " or “renderers.” The renderers use the Blink open-source layout engine for interpreting and laying out HTML.”

You may expect to find a process running for each window, and maybe even each tab. The processes are NOT “ghosts.” (I think, but “you never know?”)

700×649 24.2 KB

The Chromium Projects - Memory Usage Backgrounder
“https://www.chromium.org/developers/memory-usage-backgrounder/”

Multi-Process Model Background

To understand Chromium’s memory usage, let’s understand the multi-process model. Unlike other browsers, Chromium is divided into multiple processes.

When Chromium starts up, it will initially have two processes.

One process is the browser process which controls the main browser functionality, and the other is the initial renderer process , which runs the Blink rendering engine and JavaScript (V8).

Each time you open a new tab in Chromium, you’ll likely get a new renderer process.

With typical browsing, it is common to see 5-7 chrome.exe processes active.

Further, if you utilize plugins, apps, or extensions, they may also execute within independent processes.

All of Chromium’s processes, whether it is a browser process, a renderer process, or a plugin process, will show under the Task Manager as “chrome.exe”.

April 2020 - Several examples - screenshots - of:

  • Brave Browser Task Manager
  • Windows OS Task Manager

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I’m not sure how this applies. The activity descripted has been happening for years in the background without my interference. The actions took to turn orphan/ghost processes off only happened while testing different ways to deal with them over a two week period while Brave was inactive. So there shouldn’t have been any active threads to be messed with. With it happening over two systems as well, I’m certain this wasn’t a user end issue in regards to messing with the active processes.

If the area’s your mentioning are related however, that would suggest there would be something wrong with either the engine or a component of it potentially. I’m not sure that would be the case, as I don’t recall this behavior happening with Google Chrome before I switched to Brave, but that was a long time ago, so my memory could be off.

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