The best way to check for memory leaks in Windows is to use a program called Poolmon. Poolmon is a Microsoft Windows tool used to diagnose memory leaks in memory-managed programs. This tool works by taking snapshots of the system’s pool usage and displaying them in an easy-to-read list. By examining the list, you can find what processes are using up the most memory at any given time and determine if there are any memory leaks.
The first step to using Poolmon is to enable the Pool Tag information for the Windows operating system. To do this, go to the control panel, select System and Security, and then select Performance Monitor. Once here, expand the Resource Monitor heading and then expand the Memory tab. Under this tab, look for the Private & Shared Bytes section and check the “Show Pool Tag” checkbox.
Once Pool Tag information is enabled, open Poolmon from the Run prompt by entering “poolmon”. A window will appear with two columns. The first column will display the tag names, and the second column will display the counts for each tag name. In this example, the fluke tag has the highest count. This means that the process using this tag is causing the most memory to be consumed.
To locate the process that is causing the memory leak, click on the “View Menu” and select “Show Console List.” This will display a list of all the processes consuming memory. Now look for the process with the same tag name as the one with the highest count in Poolmon. For example, if the Fluke tag has the highest count, then look for a process with the same tag name.
Once the process is identified, double-click on it to open its properties window. Here, you can find out more information about the memory leak and take steps to solve it. For example, you can end the process if it is no longer needed or run a diagnostic program to test the process.
In some cases, memory leaks can also be caused by software bugs. If the problem persists after trying the above steps, you may need to contact the software developer to report a bug.
Finally, it is important to note that Poolmon is best used to detect memory leaks in Windows up to Windows 2000. It does not work with later versions of Windows. If you are running a newer version of Windows, your best option is to use a third-party memory leak detection tool.