MEMORY leaking in 2k/XP please offer suggestions.............!

[awsheat]

Hi all, I was getting occasional memory leaks in XP so I went back to 2000.. I'm pretty sure the leaks were occurring with 1 or 2 applications I was running (one is Direct Connect becuase I've seen this on others pc's)

Anyway, I was wondering.. What can cause a memory leak.. Is it ONLY an application that can cause it or can it be hardware based.. The reason I'm asking is because it started when i first installed XP but when I did that I also bought a new stick of RAM.. I had 2 sticks of Micron pc133 and i bought a stick of some AkByte sh1t they sell at Best Buy to give me a total of 384mb.. At first I thought it was just a problem with XP or an application but now its happening in 2k without the suspectd applications running.. 2k should at MAX use 150mb with the normal programs I have running in the background but after sitting all night i will check my memory and i will be using 250mb or more..

The WEIRD thing is if i ctrl-alt-del and check my running programs, I dont see ANYTHING that is using up a large amount of memory... In fact the built in memory resources monitor graph in task manager doesnt show me using much memory at all.. However, if i check my memory using RamBooster or my IRC script they both show a big leak...

Is it possible for RAM to cause this? I wouldnt think so but its really strange.. I guess what I'm gonna do is start disabling/uninstalling programs that run constantly to see if any are the culprits. Plus I may change the slots my ram are in.. The foreign ram is in the second DIMM for some strange reason i couldnt get it into the third DIMM.. I'm gonna try swapping them around though and see what happens..

thanks for any suggestions

 

[TunaBoo]

You wont see a mem leak if you ctrl alt delete. No, I doubt your ram is causeing a leak, but the software could.

 

[CodeJockey]

First off, it is software that causes memory leaks (an application gets a chunk of memory from the OS and uses it to store something, then forgets to give back the memory when it is finished with it).

Instead of Task Manager, try using the Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management utility and poke through the System Information->Software Environment for modules or tasks that are sucking up huge amounts of memory. Easiest to Reboot, print a report showing the modules and their mem. usage, then let the system sit idle overnight, refresh the report and compare the sizes. Do the same for Running Tasks.

If this doesn't prove helpful, then try stopping ALL applications and utilities, so you only have W2K stuff running, then see if the problem is still there. Are you sure you restored your system back to the same level (patches, updates, etc.) as it was before you tried XP?

 

[Lichee]

what are your system specs? just curious because there are known mem leaks with the audigy cards and the drivers on XP by default.