Forums Bug Reports Memory leak

The longer I run mIRC, the more memory it takes. I can close all of the channels and privmsgs I am in and it only takes the memory usage down a little bit. I was at about 32MB used yesterday for mIRC, now it's up to 41 (as reported by Windows Task Manager in XP). I do log, but only chats and I don't get enough of those to eat more than a few KB of memory a day even if it kept them in memory for some reason. I don't run a full script, only a few simple things that I have written. I have very few variables and only 2 timers running, so that shouldn't be a problem (unless there is a leak in that itself). I do DCC send a lot, but not constantly.

I've had this behavior on all 6.x clients. I'm using 6.14 now.

I will be happy to provide more information if you tell me what you need.... I wasn't really sure what was important so I just tried to mention some stuff that would have the possibility of using memory.

Edit: I just noticed that often, closing a channel will INCREASE memory usage. I just closed a channel and it froze up for about 3 seconds and brought the memory from 41MB to 44MB (and yes, it is staying at 44MB, not dropping back down)

hello, i belive that problem as something to do with one of your addons.
I recomend you to unload all addons and try that procedure again.
I know guys that run mirc for weeks with no problems...

Several things can cause that. A large number of timers, or a large window buffer in several channels, for example.
Timers you're stuck with if you need them (I've had over 50 going at once without THAT kind of memory usage).
The window buffer can be decreased in Options > Other
5000 is the default, I think. A more realistic number (to me) would be 500.

I addressed the timers issue already. In fact, I am currently not using any timers at all, though once in a while I have a timer that runs one time after 5 mins....

Also, window buffer doesn't mean crap. I have it set to 30000. That's just under 30KB/window. It does NOT explain using > 40MB. Mem usage goes down by a couple KB when I close a privmsg, but sometimes it goes UP when I close a channel. It's pretty weird....

How long have you been running mIRC for? Even running it for 20 odd hours I don't notice anything unusual, I haven't seen my mIRC go above 11mb and it doesn't steadily increase or decrease, it might be using 6MB one second and then 30 minutes later using 11MB, and back down to 9, etc..

I log both channels and chats and due to the fact I'm on 3 networks and in about 11 channels I also get a number of PMs. I rarely clean out my logs either, one is over 40MB and another is just under 20MB - logs should not be an issue.

I have no timers running, infact I have very few scripts, only two of them go over 50 lines. The only thing I use that even resembles a timer is /pvoice with a delay.

There have been some complaints in the past of mIRC using a lot of memory, perhaps the search feature will turn something up, but whatever the case, I don't think it's an actual mIRC bug.

Try installing a fresh mIRC in a clean directory and run that for say 2-3 days (or however long it normally takes you to notice this large increase of usage). See if a fresh mIRC does it. It can be difficult to use a fresh mIRC when you're so used to how even small little snippet scripts act, but it helps determine the source of the issue.

Regards,

Any /aline|/rline|/iline etc, or /loadbuf commands? If so try closing|clearing their @windows.

well, 6.15 just came out which promisses a fix for a memory leak...

I had some trouble with mIRC running on the background when I had my workstation locked for a long period of time... got disconnect but didn't display that untill I unlock the workstation, then it show alot of text within a few seconds which was text till the point of the disconnect I think, and then 'disconnect' everywhere...

I've been running mIRC for a few weeks now. I have not done any of the above commands and yes, I do use /clear. I am going to try 6.15 now. I'll report back with my results either as soon as the memory usage goes way up or in a couple weeks saying it's fixed for me. But if this leak fix is just for picture windows, that doesn't effect me....

The leak fix is only relevant to drawing icons with /drawpic. If you or your scripts are not drawing any icons with /drawpic then there should be no difference to expect.

Started at 8MB when I installed 6.15, now up to 15MB....

It isn't a leak I don't think, a bad use of bufferspace, sure, but not a leak. After doing a /clear on all my filled up debug windows, the mem usage stayed the same BUT after letting them fill up some more again, my usage didn't increase, suggesting to me that mIRC just didn't release the memory, but it wont request for more space untill the old memory is filled up. Dropping your buffer down would help after you restart mIRC, unless there is some command to re-allocate the memory usage on the fly.

Also, setting the window buffer to 30000 doesn't mean 30,000 characters, but 30,000 lines, and then it depends on how many characters per line you have as to what the actual buffer size in bytes is, as well as how many control characters per line, as the buffer counts hard wraps as lines, not incoming commands. Anyway, my 6000 buffer is 427KB as a text file (6002 lines in the file, designating start and end of buffer) so at 30,000, each window would be over 2 MB (I am about 110 characters wide, not including control characters in the channel I saved the buffer on)

are you running any hashtables?
i noticed they have a similar effect

when you load a large hashtable, and it grows, it grows in the memory as well. however when you save the grown hashtable, restart mirc and load the new table, the size in memory wont be the same.

not sure if this is a memoryleak or just optimization.

I'm having a very similar problem and actually i moved to using xchat from mIRC 6.14 because of this. I have a fresh install of mIRC 6.15 with absolutely no scripts/addons at all now and it's been running for about 48 hours, it's connected on 4 different networks (2 of them use SSL) and i'm on a total of 27 channels. Windows taskmanager shows the following stats for mirc.exe:

Mem Usage: 14 412 K
Peak Mem Usage: 134 544 K
VM Size: 485 888 K

I'm running Windows XP Pro with all the latest patches, don't have any viruses/trojans and mIRC is freshly installed now with all default settings and no addons/scripts at all + my windows is installed 2 weeks ago cos i thought a reinstall might have helped

The memory usage doesn't bother me at all (even the peak mem usage) but the anonying thing is the 500mb+ mIRC uses of the windows pagefile and it just keeps growing the longer i run it and then windows has to increase it and becomes slower and slower to use.

I'd love to go back to mIRC from xchat cos it lacks some nice features and looks uglier imo + i'm not familiar with perl/tcl scripting that is required for xchat scripts but i just can't use mIRC if it keeps doing this. The mem usage for xchat is 15mb/25mb/21mb (current/peak/pagefile) and i've been running it 3 days longer than mIRC now so it's much better in that aspect.

A solution for this would be much appreciated!

Forgot to mention my system components:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+, Epox 8RDA+, 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

Perhaps there's an issue with SSL? I really don't know why it's doing it. I've been running mIRC for 30 hours now and it's using 8,152k. I have XP Pro with all the latest patches and no trojans or viruses either, nor spyware. I have no scripts that would affect mem usage either. I have SSL installed for mIRC but I'm not connected to any SSL servers. I'm connected to 3 networks.

I've never noticed a large mem usage since 5.91 and I still don't on 6.15.

Have you actually run 2-3 virus scanners (i.e. AVG) to test yourself for trojans? Many Internet savvy people just assume they haven't got one just because they're knowledgeable...if you haven't, I'd run one just incase. A spyware scan too might be a good idea.

Do either of you connect to IRC or run your computers in a way that the majority average Joe would not? Any special setups?

Regards,

I've scanned my system with Norton online scan, ZoneAlarm Security 5.0 scanner and Norton Antivirus 2004 + i use Ad-Aware regularly so i'm pretty sure those aspects can't be the reason. I'm beginning to think the SSL too cos i don't remember having these probs with older version when i used WinSSL Wrap for the SSL connections. I don't have any special setups with my system compared to the average user if you don't count the thing it's on practically 24/7. I'll restart tonight and try without the sll and see if that solves the prob. Would be nice to have the SSL support properly integrated to mIRC tho since i don't like extra programs i have to run. I'll write back tomorrow evening with test results.

Seems to me that SSl isn't the problem.. Last night i restarted, deleted the SSL dlls and didn't connect to SSL servers but 2 other servers instead and picked some chans from there. I'm on 4 networks about 30 chans now and mirc.exe has been running for 10hours:

Mem Usage: 33mb
Peak Mem Usage: 96mn
VM Size: 421mb!!!

I joined a few big channels tho but my scrollback buffer is 2048 so that shouldn't be the reason, dunno what the hell might be

Just a quick note:

Just because the virtual memory (swap) is 421MB is size, that doesn't mean 421MB of information is actively being used. Windows sets, by default, a swap space the size of the total amount of your system's RAM plus a little bit more all of which mIRC, I imagine, is not using (if any).

Are you sure mIRC has peaked at 96MB of RAM usage? In all my years of using mIRC, I have never perconally seen it occupy that much memory, although 33 MB isn't uncommon.

I've checked the numbers from from windows taskmanager and the swapfile usage really is 400mb+ for mirc.exe cos taskmanager shows the specific amount of the pagefile each program has reserved for themselves. My overall pagefile is the windows default 768mb in this case, altho windows will increase it when needed. The peak number is also correct. You can see them both if u go to processes tab in taskmanager and select view - select columns and tick peak mem usage and vm size from there. (you prolly knew this anyways)

Well that wasn't my inital reason to post.
The reason is that i found out what was causing the high memory usage! It was WindowBlinds, i had skinned my windows and mIRC too ofcourse. I uninstalled WindowBlinds and now i've been running mIRC for 14 hours and memusage is as follows:

Mem Usage: 5mb
Peak Mem Usage: 11mb
VM Size: 5mb

And the channels and settings are exactly the same as in my first post. So i guess it's problem solved then. Dunno what will cause that tho but i prolly have to stick with ugly default windows look from now on, acceptable tradeoff

Actually, I didn't know that. Learn something new every day

Glad you found the prob

To add some data to the thread:
I use nonamescript, I have about 30 open channels (most with filled 3000 line buffers) on 4 networks, no ssl. After 3 weeks of running time, mIRC usage is about 30MB usage/peak/VM size. This is XP Pro SP1 with patches (and that cool Virtual Desktop Powertoy :d), and StyleXP for some really fancy MacOS X looks . Logs are reaching in the 100's of MB, but don't seem to be making a difference (I clean them out on occasion).