A memory leak may occur in the Lsass.exe process when SAM event tracing is enabled in Windows 2000

On a Microsoft Windows 2000-based domain controller, memory usage may continue to increase, and you may have to periodically restart the server. If you use System Monitor to view the Local Security Authority Service process (Lsass.exe), you may see that memory usage for the Lsass.exe process continues to increase. The following Error event may also be logged in the event log:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: NTDS General
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1168
Description:
Error 8(8) has occurred (Internal ID 3020239). Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services for assistance.

Note To monitor the Lsass.exe process, see the Process\Private Bytes and the Process\Virtual Bytes performance counters in System Monitor.

This problem may occur when event tracing for Security Accounts Manager (SAM) events is enabled. When event tracing for SAM events is enabled, the remote procedure call (RPC) binding is not released. Therefore, a memory leak occurs in the Lsass.exe process.

Hotfix information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem.

If the hotfix is available for download, there is a "Hotfix download available" section at the top of this Knowledge Base article. If this section does not appear, submit a request to Microsoft Customer Service and Support to obtain the hotfix.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note The "Hotfix download available" form displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites are required.

Restart requirement

You must restart your computer after you apply this hotfix.

Hotfix replacement information

This hotfix does not replace any other hotfixes.

File information

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel.

To work around this problem, disable event tracing for SAM events.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

To determine whether event tracing is turned on for SAM events, run the tracelog.exe -l command. This command lists all the trace sessions that are active. The output that this command produces does not identify the events where event tracing is enabled. However, you can use the information that is contained in the Logger Name field to determine the application that turned tracing on. You can also stop all tracing sessions by running the tracelog.exe -x command.

Note The Tracelog.exe utility is provided with the Windows 2000 Resource Kit. For more information about the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

For additional information about the standard terminology that is used to describe Microsoft software updates, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: