Is there a good Valgrind substitute for Windows?

Why not use Valgrind + Wine to debug your Windows app? See http://wiki.winehq.org/Wine_and_Valgrind

(Chromium uses this to check the Windows version for memory errors; see build.chromium.org and look at the experimental or memory waterfalls, and search for wine.)

There's also Dr. Memory, see dynamorio.org/drmemory.html

Some more good commercial tools:

• Purify
• Insure++

Development environment for Windows you are using may contain its own tools. Visual Studio, for example, lets you detect and isolate memory leaks in your programs

There is Pageheap.exe part of the debugging tools for Windows. It's free and is basically a custom memory allocator/deallocator.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286470

I had the chance to use Compuware DevPartner Studio in the past and that was really good, but it's quite expensive. A cheaper solution could be GlowCode, i just worked with a 5.x version and, despite some problems in attaching to a process i needed to debug, it worked quite well.

I've been loving Memory Validator, from a company called Software Verification.

See the "Source Test Tools" link on the Software QA Testing and Test Tool Resources page for a list of similar tools.

I've used BoundsChecker,DevPartner Studio and Intel V-Tune in the past for profiling. I liked V-Tune the best; you could emulate various Intel chipsets and it would give you hints on how to optimize for that platform.

Does Jochen Kalmbach's Memory Leak Detector qualify?

PS: The URL to the latest version is buried somewhere in the article's comment thread.

Perhaps CodeSnitch would be something you're after? http://www.entrek.com/codesnitch.html

If you are developing with Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero C++ Builder, you could use CodeGuard.

The free tool DebugDiag will help find memory and handle leaks.

You don't need to augument your program for DebugDiag to work.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=28BD5941-C458-46F1-B24D-F60151D875A3&displaylang=en

Although it is not the easiest or most intuitive program to use! Make sure you google for tutorials and instructions on how to use it.

Just an idea, you could also implement a memory allocator and track all calls to malloc and free. However this might be too much for some projects.