Limit memory usage by preventing internet access attempts?

[mikewoodhouse]

I'm trying to evaluate Memory Profiler 7.2 but I keep being thwarted by a "runaway" memory allocation problem: profiler memory use runs up to outrageous levels (about 6GB private bytes, 4GB working set on my 4GB Win7x64 machine) and everything becomes so unresponsive that it's almost completely unusable. Not completely: things can get done, but it takes ages and is not a pleasant experience (!)

I've seen something like this once before: when Paint.Net tried to automatically access the internet to check for updates, which proved difficult through our corporate firewalls, proxies and other whatnot (I've no idea what's so special about it, I'm afraid, other than that we're a large financial organisation and there are probably some seldom-seen "features" at work somewhere). So it's mostly us.

I've tried the Knowledge Base certificate check disabling suggestion, modifying my hosts file. That seems to have speeded up UI availability dramatically: it appears in about 10sec. Within the next 10 seconds (without loading any profiling project) memory use starts to increase in tens-of-megabyte chunks, reaching the levels described above in about a minute. Could there be more internet access being attempted? Perhaps for updates? If so, is there a way to disable this? I hope so - the tool looks to be extraordinarily useful, if I can get around this weirdness.

UPDATE: It occurred to me that a worthwhile test might be to try again with my network cable disconnected - same problem, which is interesting. Or not.
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Mike Woodhouse

[Brian Donahue]

Hi Mike,

I'm aware that our experts have already been in contact with you about this.

Unfortunately my impression is that this is an environment-specific issue as this behavior doesn't occur in-house and you can bet that we do test the software for memory leaks before it goes out.

The only internet accesses are certificate validation (this I may stress is a feature of .NET Framework and not done intentionally by us), check for updates, and activation. And you can elect not to check for updates automatically.

If you want to verify network access, you can try the fiddler tool (http://www.fiddler2.net).

What's not clear is when this "runaway" memory usage occurs -- for instance, how long was the profiler running, how many snapshots were taken, etc? It may be "normal" resource usage or it may not. The amount of resources consumed by profiler is directly proportional to the resource usage of the application being profiled and in most cases ANTS is being set to work on an application that is already fragile because it's being used in a curative rather than preventative way to investigate problems in an applicaiton that is already making the computer unresponsive.
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Brian Donahue
Technical Support
Red Gate Software Ltd.
44 (0)870 160 0037 ext 8521
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