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I hope the question is not too vague and someone can add some light to my problem.

I created a Windows application (makefile) with the chromium project (already asked about this problem in the chromium forum) and Visual Studio 2019. The application starts some processes and each of them used around 20 KB memory but strangely this same application uses over 200 KB per process is some PCs with same Windows version. (Memory usage after starting the application, nothing else done)

I have been fighting a couple of days with the compiler/linker options with no success. Still huge memory usage. Chromium examples did not show this problem using my makefile which made me even more crazy.

At the end I ended up changing the name of the exe file, instead of app.exe just app1.exe and...problem gone, normal memory usage in all PCs which shown this problem.

I changed the name in the makefile to generate same executable but with different name and also changed in Windows Explorer the name of the original and problematic exe file with same positive result.

I renamed in Windows Explorer the good app1.exe application back to app.exe and the problem appeared again...

I am searching now for some kind of Windows configuration or program which could generate this problem but no luck so far. Windows Firewall already disabled.

or could this be some kind of virus?

Sergio
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    See [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62611787/whats-so-special-about-ride-exe-anyway) some pointers as to why the name might matter. – dxiv Aug 26 '20 at 19:45

1 Answers1

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Problem solved...thanks to ProcessHacker tool I found out that the library "verifier.dll" was loaded in the bad case. This dll is part of the Windows Application Verifier tool. I do not remember to have used this tool before, it is even not activated. I then found out that there is a registry entry:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\

where I could find the name of my application. After renaming this entry everything works as expected. I will now investigate what the variables inside this entry mean: GlobalFlag = 0x02000000 and PageHeapFlags = 0x2

Sergio
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