Renderer OOM crash (code -536870904) every 10-15 min on Windows — 32GB RAM, with real-time monitoring data:

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Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Problem

Cursor renderer process crashes with OOM (code -536870904) every 10-15 minutes during agent chat sessions. System has 10+ GB free RAM at crash time — this is NOT a system memory issue.

Evidence: Real-time Memory Monitoring

I ran a PowerShell monitor logging Cursor process memory every 5 seconds. Here is the exact crash timeline for the renderer process (pid 12408):

19:09 pid=12408: 689 MB ← startup baseline
19:10 pid=12408: 862 MB ← gradual growth
19:13 pid=12408: 1399 MB ← accelerating (+200MB in 6s)
19:16 pid=12408: 1712 MB ← total Cursor >4GB
19:16 pid=12408: 2450 MB ← peak #1, partial GC
19:20 pid=12408: 2117 MB ← 3rd growth wave
19:21 pid=12408: 3030 MB
19:21 pid=12408: 3806 MB ← rapid acceleration
19:22 pid=12408: 4470 MB ← PEAK then OOM kill
19:22 pid=12408: DEAD ← 8 processes vanished at once

Key observations:

  • Renderer grew from 689 MB to 4470 MB in ~12 minutes
  • Growth accelerates over time (not linear)
  • System had 10.9 GB free RAM at crash — not system OOM
  • –max-old-space-size=8192 in argv.json had NO effect on renderer

Additional findings

  1. Subprocess crash loop: A child process dies and respawns every ~30 seconds
  2. OTEL error spam: Continuous OTLPExporterError (“Trace spans collection is not enabled”) every 10-15s — telemetry.telemetryLevel=off did NOT stop it
  3. Extension host “retrieval-always-local” frequently goes unresponsive during growth
  4. 12 crash sessions in 24 hours with same pattern

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open a workspace on Windows
  2. Start an agent chat session with tool use (shell commands, file reads)
  3. Continue conversation for 10-15 minutes
  4. Monitor renderer memory — grows to ~4.5 GB and crashes

Expected Behavior

Renderer should have bounded memory, or at minimum respect --max-old-space-size from argv.json.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 2.6.12 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 1917e900a0c4b0111dc7975777cfff60853059d0
Date: 2026-03-04T21:41:18.914Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.6.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.22631

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

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Hi @Guto_Moreira!

Thanks for the report. We’ve been working to improve performance issues in 2.6. Could you let us know if you’re still seeing the crash in v2.6.18?

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