Memory Leak under XP

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Last seen: 13 years 3 months ago
Joined: Dec 30 2003 - 00:38
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Memory Leak under XP

I was wondering if someone here could help a co-worker of mine with a software problem. The computer he is using is a Dell laptop with 512MB of memory running XP.

He is running a calculation application (it is a command line calculation application that automatically reads an input file and spits out an output file with minimal information printed to the command prompt window) repeatedly through a *.BAT file.
The problem is that the code seems to have a memory leak. If he runs the application 5000 times using the same simplified input file the computer runs out of memory in ~20min (I think that corresponds to ~5000 runs). He has looked at the process window before it runs out of memory, and the open processes do not add up to the total memory in use.

So the question is, is there anything he can do (beside telling the software people to fix the code or run this on a computer that has 3GB of memory) to fix this? I told him that I thought it was impossible unless the software gets fixed. Any tricks?

Thanks

IC

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nope

since windows relies on all programs to be in management of themselves, the OS only overseas that the program doesn't take over the whole machine. When there is a memory leak, it is up to the programmers to fix it. If you put a damper on it, it will just crash the Application.
IIRC, WinNT had this problem with the kernel running up and taking out the whole memory. Sadly, the kernel was what did the monitoring, and it was not able to manage itself. anything that runs on top of the OS is supposed to manage it's own memory.

It is really a PITA when working with these programs.

So, in short, you have no option but to call the software engineers and tell them to release a patch ASAP

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That's what I thought

That's what I thought. Thanks for the confirmation.

IC

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