At 06:20 AM 3/11/02 +0200, stevens wrote the following: >The problem seems to be that the processor gets more and more busy / >loaded as programs are opened and closed. When closing down the computer >the system never gets to the "You my now switch of your computer." A >bar graph indicator of processor work load gets longer and longer, but >not from all program shutdowns.
The continued opening and closing of programs is one of the fundamental weaknesses of all version of Windows due to its poor "garbage collection". Garbage collection (GC) is a term used to describe the behavior of automatic dynamic memory management. When a user opens (i.e., starts, runs or executes a program) dynamic memory (space) is allocated for the program to run. When the program terminates (finishes, quits, ends) the space taken by the program is supposed to be completely reclaimed by the operating system and returned so that it can be made available to another program (or process). Garbage collectors are run in various ways: 1. Explicitly invoked by the user's program 2. Automatically invoked when the memory allocator runs out of memory. 3. Speculatively invoked when the user's program is idle or waiting on user input. 4. Incrementally, meaning that the collection proceeds in small steps that are interleaved with normal computation. 5. Concurrently, meaning that the collection occurs at the same time as normal computation, or interleaved in an arbitrary and unpredictable way. The only solution for most Windows users is to do a shutdown and restart as soon as system resources begin to fall off. In this manner, all of main memory will be restored to its previous maximum. Another term to describe this behavior is called "memory leakage", the gradual increase in the memory used by the operating system that occurs over time, especially if the program opens and closes a large number of sockets. References: The Garbage Collection Page http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/people/staff/rej/gc.html Gorik's Garbage Collection Page http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~gorik/garbage/ Memory Leak in Windows 95 Kernel Using Windows Sockets (Q148336) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q148336 Memory Leak When Performance Counters Are Not Available (Q234351) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q234351 -- Gerry Boyd ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
