Byte by Bite

Program users share memory-leak problems

by Marv Dealy

Published May 27, 2005

My current favorite e-mail program, Thunderbird (from the folks at Mozilla.org), has recently begun to give me heart burn.

For some reason, the program has begun to load very, very slowly, perhaps taking 5 minutes or more to be fully “ready to go.” Other odd thing have also started happening. For example, when I click on an e-mail in the inbox so that I can view its contents I get a blank screen. If I choose to “print preview” the supposedly blank screen, I can then view and print the e-mail.

But wait, there’s more.

Sometimes when I choose to delete a particular e-mail, it doesn’t go away. And e-mails that are clearly flagged as junk don’t disappear. So off I went to the user forums at Mozilla.org, and sure enough, other folks are reporting similar problems. The common cure seems to be reinstalling the program, so I tried that, downloading the freshest version and installing it into a different folder on my computer.

An aside: I generally resist the common tech support to “just reinstall everything” because I don’t generally find that helps things.

Back to our story: During the installation the New Thunderbird imported e-mail server settings, address book and e-mails from the Old Thunderbird. It also apparently imported whatever is causing the problem, as well.

I noticed that whenever Thunderbird was open my computer seemed to be slow to a crawl sometimes, so I began to check CPU and memory useage with Windows Task Manager. Thunderbird memory useage seems to vary from as little as 1,500 K when the program is open but minimized, to about 9,800 K when the inbox window is maximized and the program is just sitting there. I have also watched memoray useage grow and grow to as much as 250,000 K of memory, and this is while the program is just sitting there doing nothing.

Last night, I left the program on overnight, and by this morning the useage had gone up to over 160,000 K. Additionally, I’ve observed that Windows Task Manager still shows Thunderbird gobbling ever more memory even when I’ve turned the program off.

Somewhat trusty sidekick Jason Niedens did some poking around, Googling the question about “memory leaks in Thunderbird” and lo and behold, other folks out there are having the same set of problems. The general hope in these online forums seems to be that the next release of Thunderbird will fix the problem.

In the meantime now, boys and girls, what’s happening here? How can the program just start gobbling so much memory? It’s almost like it was a virus that causes a memory leak. Whoa, you say, a memory leak?

According to Uniblue™ (formerly LIUtilities Inc.), “Memory leaks are the results of bugs, which cause a program to allocate resources that are never released. For example a program might request 1 MB of RAM from Windows to store an image, but the programmer forgot to return the memory to Windows when the process was complete. All memory will be returned to Windows when a process is terminated, so in most cases you can recover from memory leaks by stopping the programs causing them.” (http://www.liutilities.com/products/speedupmypc/speedupterms/memoryleak/).

And you thought memory leaks only occurred as we get older.

Speaking of leaks, did you know that as much as 4 pounds of lead can leak from a traditional computer monitor if you break the screen? According to a story at News.com by Anthony DePalma of The New York Times,, “Electronic devices are a mounting concern because they can contain potentially toxic substances like lead, mercury and chromium. The federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 70 percent of the heavy metals in landfills leach from electronic equipment.” (http://news.com.com/NYC+may+bless+afterlife+for+old+computers/2100-1042_3-5719846.html?tag=nefd.top)

Moves are afoot at the local, state and federal levels to take some action to require manufacturers to take a hand in recycling old computer equipment. In DePalma’s story, he notes that the New York City council is considering requiring computer manufacturers “to collect and recycle the electronic devices if they want to be allowed to continue selling them in the city.”

DePalma says that such laws would likely be resisted by both retailers and manufacturers who are in agreement that “something” needs to be done about e-waste, but are worried about a patchwork of laws cropping up if no national standards are set.

The proposed New York City law would also require manufacturers to take care of recycling computers that were made by companies that no longer are in business, and would hand out credits to companies who donate useable used computer equipment to nonprofit agencies and schools.

DePalma says in his story that “Some computer makers already run their own recycling programs. Dell gives every buyer of a new computer the option of mailing back an old computer free, regardless of the maker. A Dell spokeswoman, Caroline Dietz, said that for a $10 fee, the company is also willing to accept an old computer from someone who is not buying a new one.”

So there you have it, a solution to what to do with that old computer equipment you have in your basement, garage, barn or chicken coop – send it to Dell! Or, take the local approach and give it to the garbage disposal folks locally; you’ll find (as has been written about in this paper previously) that fees have been lifted for proper disposal of e-waste.

The bottom line—quit throwing computer monitors and stuff into the local ravine, and quit dropping them off at my office during the night. I really don’t have any use for decade-old computer equipment that you’ve tired of.