.NET processes will tend to grow to what looks like an alarmingly large size unless there is a reason for them to shrink. The CLR does actually keep track of the amount of memory being used system-wide, and if other processes start to demand more memory, the CLR will trigger a garbage collect in your process, reducing the amount of memory that it is using.
So the large-looking memory consumption isn't usually an issue. If anything else in the system starts to need that memory, the CLR will give it back. IDispose doesn't have any bearing on this. IDispose has nothing to do with memory allocation, it's just about other resources. The fact that your memory usage stays constant at 18MB indicates that you're not leaking resources. If it was forever creeping upwards, then that would be something to worry about. But 18MB is fairly normal. -- Ian Griffiths DevelopMentor -----Original Message----- From: Courtney Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Hello, I'm taking a stab at windows services for the first time. My windows service is written in vb.net (not my lang of choice but I have to go with the flow of the department). It is running a once a day timer that calls several stored procs and depending on the size of the returned values(s) sends out emails. Now for my questions. Can I expect Windows Services in .Net to have a considerable memory foot print? I check and rechecked the closure of my only dataset and datareader objects. I have also set them to nothing when I have finished using them. This service is only called once a day. When it first started it uses a woping 7MB of RAM...then on first execution it uses 18MB and this stays constant execution after execution. I monitored the size hoping the garbage collector might help me out but to noavail. I do not implement IDispose if that helps.
