> True, however, my memory is also dropping fast. Right now MemTurbo says my
> RAM is at 44 MB. Resources are 38%. Now let's wait 5 minutes and open no new
> windows or programs....
>
> (5 minutes pass)
>
> Okay, now my RAM is 35 MB and resources are at 38% still. No new programs
> were opened, only activity to occur was a couple of ICQ messages and maybe
> 2-3 clicks in my already-open browser window. How can you lose 9MB of memory
> doing so little? See what I mean?
Memory management is just a bit more complex than what you're looking
at. One of the things that Windows does is to swap memory back in
from the virtual memory file on disk when physical RAM becomes
available. This will give the appearance of memory leaks when there
actually aren't any.
The only way to determine if a particular application is leaking is
to start up the machine, launch the system monitor and watch the
"Unused physical memory" and "Disk Cache Size". "Page-Ins" is also
quite useful in determining if virtual memory pages are being moved
into physical memory. If these are stable, then start the
application you suspect and watch these variables. Do not start any
other programs.
Most memory leaks are due to a programmer failing to return released
memory to the pool. Netscape Navigator used to be a pretty egregious
offender in this regard. The program's use of memory has improved
over time, but occasionally it still leaks under certain
circumstances.
