Snapshot collection in .NET app frees the memory, what is happening behind the scenes?

Question

I'm investigating a memory leak in a .NET Winforms application and when collecting a snapshot with my tool I noticed the memory got freed (1GB to 1mb).

Here come my doubts... Is it really a memory leak? What is the .NET profiler doing when collecting a snapshot that my application is not? Is it forcing the Garbage Collection? If so I tried doing the same with GC.Collect() but the memory still kept rising.

Looking forward to your considerations.

Thanks!

user_8688902 · Answer

Be careful with GC.Collect() because it does NOT trigger actual garbage collecting. It only tells GC that it would be good to trigger. You can find more information here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/garbage-collection/fundamentals?redirectedfrom=MSDN#conditions_for_a_garbage_collection

You can try with:

GC.Collect(2, GCCollectionMode.Forced);

Where 2 is garbage collection generation

You can try with:

GC.Collect(2, GCCollectionMode.Forced);

Where 2 is garbage collection generation

Snapshot collection in .NET app frees the memory, what is happening behind the scenes?

1 Answers