Why do some programs use more and more memory as they run for longer periods of time?

Asked by PhiNotPi (12686

) March 2nd, 2011

I often use the music program Finale. When I open it up, it takes up a little over 100,000 K of memory. (it is a large program) However, as I do stuff in it, the program grows to almost 200,000 K.

Now here’s the problem: If I don’t touch the program after that and I leave it open, Finale swells up to almost 300,000 K by the next day. This causes my computer to slow to a crawl, Finale begins to stop working right, and I am forced to exit the program with Windows Task Manager. Why does Finale grow when I am not even using it, and I just have it open? Can I fix it?

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4 Answers

There are probably internal processes that load data into memory and the program does not clear the memory of unneeded data. Usually it means it is badly programmed.

ragingloli (52231

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Why do you want to leave Finale on for that long? Just curious.

Edit: Also, I find Sibelius the better music editing program.

ParaParaYukiko (6116

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@ParaParaYukiko Even if I wanted to switch, it’s way to late to switch, mostly due to the cost of the programs. There would also be compatibilty problems with any music I have already written.

PhiNotPi (12686

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If a program starts taking up memory without anything happening and it doesn’t release the memory at some point then it’s usually a bug called a “memory leak.” The people that wrote it would need to find out why it’s not releasing memory (or why it keeps gobbling up more) and you wouldn’t be able to fix it. Unless you check to see if there’s a patch or update for it.

mrentropy (17213

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