Does ballooning not work in Windows 10 anymore?

[Roy360]

Config:





Using virtio-win-0.1.185

Uninstalling the virtio drivers immediately releases all the memory. (I go from 9GB to 1.8G)

Ballooning service is installed:

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

I guess you understand the ballooning device wrong.

       The balloon driver allows guests to express to the hypervisor how much memory they require. The balloon driver allows the host to efficiently allocate and memory to the guest and allow free memory to be allocated to other guests and processes.    
       Guests using the balloon driver can mark sections of the guest's RAM as not in use (balloon inflation). The hypervisor can free the memory and use the memory for other host processes or other guests on that host. When the guest requires the freed memory again, the hypervisor can reallocate RAM to the guest (balloon deflation).

 

[Roy360]

Hi,

I guess you understand the ballooning device wrong.

       The balloon driver allows guests to express to the hypervisor how much memory they require. The balloon driver allows the host to efficiently allocate and memory to the guest and allow free memory to be allocated to other guests and processes.   
       Guests using the balloon driver can mark sections of the guest's RAM as not in use (balloon inflation). The hypervisor can free the memory and use the memory for other host processes or other guests on that host. When the guest requires the freed memory again, the hypervisor can reallocate RAM to the guest (balloon deflation).

I read what you wrote, but I'm not getting what I'm misunderstanding...

The balloon service is eating up memory and never returning it. 9GB usage at the desktop without any programs running is not normal for Windows 10.

When I uninstall the balloon driver, ran usage comes back to normal (~2GB)