Finding a Memory Leak

A memory leak occurs when a process allocates memory from the paged or nonpaged pools, but does not free the memory. As a result, these limited pools of memory are depleted over time, causing Windows to slow down. If memory is completely depleted, failures may result.

This section includes the following:

• Determining Whether a Leak Exists describes a technique you can use if you are not sure whether there is a memory leak on your system.
• Finding a Kernel-Mode Memory Leak describes how to find a leak that is caused by a kernel-mode driver or component.
• Finding a User-Mode Memory Leak describes how to find a leak that is caused by a user-mode driver or application.