Memory leak in Flash with Win7, IE9, 64bit

Report · Jun 21, 2012

I have been having an issue for quite some time on 2 different computers. Both of them are Windows 7 64bit and use IE9.

Generally I have 1 - 5 tabs open in IE at any given time. Usually one of them is a tab for Yahoo Mail. Other tabs are related to whatever I may be searching for or doing at that time, so pretty varied. Throughout the day at random times I will begin to get a grey icon for anywhere on some tabs where there is supposed to be a flash video (like the ad in the right side of the Yahoo Mail tab)... When it happens I can open Task Manager in windows and I notice that 1 or two "iexplore.exe *32" processes have memory consumed in excess of 600,000K. When I end those processes I am again able to see any flash videos that need to be viewed.

If I leave Task Manager open throughout the day I can see the memory consumption increase on various tabs until I cannot see any more flash videos or even open new tabs in IE until I end those processes. Further, the memory does not get released if I just close the tabs in IE, but I must either end the specific process or close all tabs in IE so that IE is completely unloaded.

I have since uninstalled the Flash player and the issue has gone away. I can re-install the flash player and the issue returns. Can you please help? This has been a huge annoyance and I had hoped that it would be fixed sooner or later. Unfortunately it has not been fixed and has finally prompted me to post something....

Report · Jun 21, 2012

Did you try using IE compatibility mode? This may work around the issue.

Report · Jun 22, 2012

For each and every tab that happens to have a flash video on it? No...

Besides, even if that would work, that is quite a small band-aid to put on such a big cut...

Report · Jun 22, 2012

I'll leave Yahoo Mail up with the latest version of Flash Player over the weekend to see if it reproduces. If you have any other sites that you think might be suspects, let me know.

Report · Jun 25, 2012

I don't think it is specific to Yahoo mail, but just a tab I usually keep open. The leak occurs throughout the day with various tabs open. Sometimes it is from the Sirius Satellite player (flash based) or the Amazon AWS dashboard (also flash based).

As I said before, it happens on two separate computers (work & home) with similar specs but not identical. Similarities are W7 64bit, IE 9 (32 bit version since some plugins such as the Yahoo toolbar don't work on the 64 bit version).

Thanks for looking into it. If there is anything else I can provide please let me know.

Report · Jun 25, 2012

I didn't see any growth with Yahoo mail over time.

Report · Jun 26, 2012

"I didn't see any growth with Yahoo mail over time."

Do you have a similar setup as mine? Win 7 Ultimate, 64bit using 32bit IE 9?

Report · Jun 26, 2012

Win7 Enterprise x64, Service Pack 1, MSIE 9.0.8112.16421 32-bit with Flash Player 11.3.300.257.

I used perfmon to track memory usage, and saw no significant increase or spike over a 24-hour period.

I'm not disputing that you're experiencing a memory leak, but I'm not seeing it with Yahoo mail. I'm happy to keep looking if you have other suspects.

Report · Jun 26, 2012

Can you try one more thing for me? Same set up, but install the Yahoo Toolbar...

In my effort to pin down the problem I have uninstalled the Yahoo Toolbar on my work computer and it *seems* that the issue has gone away (so far at least - I'll keep running in this scenario to check it).

So it would seem that if I uninstall flash (or disable the Shockwave Flash Object add on) and keep Yahoo Toolbar installed, the memory issue does not occur.

So far, with Flash installed (Shockwave Flash Object add on enabled) the memory issue does not occur.

with both Flash & Yahoo Toolbar I see the memory consumption issue which results in the grey icon for flash videos.

Again, this is very preliminary for me and I might be down the wrong path, but it looks promising so far...

Report · Jun 28, 2012

Hi Jeromie,

Did I lose you?

It seems the coloration between Flash and the Yahoo Toolbar is the culprit (for me at least). I ran fine for most of the day, then re installed the Yahoo Toolbar and there went the memory. I removed flash and ran fine again for quite some time...

Report · Jun 28, 2012

Yeah, I was having a hard time installing it directly from the Yahoo website. I finally searched for it in the add-on manager and was able to install it there.

I'm seeing a really slow increase with Yahoo Mail and Youtube windows open, but it also looks like it cleans up periodically. I'm going to leave it running overnight and see where things are in the morning.

Report · Jun 29, 2012

Okay, this is the weirdest problem I've seen in quite a while, but I'm successfully able to reproduce.

I opened the following bug on it to get it investigated:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3227590

Report · Jun 29, 2012

Well great! I'm glad we were able to hunt down the scenario and reproduce... Good thing I come from a long background of QA and Development!

Thanks for taking the time to reproduce it, and I hope it will be addressed soon since this affects every computer I use since Yahoo Toolbar is my primary toolbar.

Report · Aug 13, 2012

I have a memory leak issue on www.bloomberg.com using 32- and 64-bit IE 9 on 64-bit Windows 7. The website reloads automatically at time intervals; each time, IE takes another 85 MB of memory. I have seen IE memory usage as high as 2.5 GB!

This problem does not occur when the Flash add-on is disabled, or on Firefox.

The same problem occurs on my Dell Latitude and Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. The machines have similar Windows and IE configurations.

I am using Flash 11.3.300.270, and I have installed the latest updates for IE and Windows.

Thanks for looking at this issue!

Report · Aug 13, 2012

My first hunch would be that this could be actionscript related, and possibly a problem with the bloomberg site. However, if this does not occur on Firefox (or Chrome) then we might be dealing with something else. Could you please open a bug on this at bugbase.adobe.com so we can investigate further?

Thanks,
Chris

PS. I tried this out using the same config but IE leveled out at 210mb and didn't grow further (I left the browser alone for about 30 minutes, also tried refreshing manually 10 times or so.)

Report · Aug 14, 2012

Just my five cents. Our team faced with similar issue in IE9 when after reload browser no memory released. Our investigations resulted that it is somewhere in "swfobjects.js" that is, JScript is not releasing SWF object in IE.

After struggling with it, we ultimately dropped using "history.js" and the issue went away.

This issue seems similar.

Report · Aug 14, 2012

Thanks for the info. Do you recall if you opened an issue on this on the swfobject site?

Report · Aug 14, 2012

Nope, just fixed it in our product and moved on.

Report · Jul 24, 2012

Hi,

Can you confirm your ram - Cp6 needs 4gb compared to Cp .5. which needed 2gb!. (Interestingly Adobe have left off windows vista for Cp 5.5)

Are you using IE 64 bit or IE 32 bit ?

If 64 bit have you installed the 64 bits flash player?

Check your version here

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-64-bit-operating.html

Tech specifications

http://www.equanet.co.uk/catalogue/item/it-equipment/Software/Software-Licensing/Adobe-Captivate/651...

Windows for 5.5

• 1GHz or faster processor • Microsoft ® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended); Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1; or Windows 7 • 1GB minimum RAM (2GB recommended)

http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/tech-specs.html

Windows version 6

1 GHz or faster processor Intel® Pentium® 4, Intel Centrino®, Intel Xeon®, or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor

Microsoft® Windows XP with Service Pack 3; or Windows 7 with Service Pack 1

2GB minimum RAM (4GB recommended)

Report · Aug 23, 2012

I have the identical problem with Win 7, 64 bit + IE8, 32 bit. Four to six tabs open, one of them is Yahoo Mail, and it's just a matter of time before I encounter the Adobe GCOD (Grey Circle of Death) signaling a shortage of memory available to the Flash player. I have a couple of add-ons including two or three toolbars, and have come to the conclusion that it's either:

1. some glitchy interaction between one of my add-ons + Flash

2. some glitchy interaction between one of my add-ons + the Yahoo Mail website

3. some glitchy interaction between Flash + the Yahoo Mail website

I've never once experienced this problem in Firefox, though I typically access Yahoo Mail using IE, and have less add-ons in Firefox. I've tried all the usual suspects, resetting IE to default settings, reinstalling IE, reinstalling Flash, Shockwave, Java... I assume it's not #3 because there must be many people successfully running the Flash player in conjunction with Yahoo Mail. I wish there some kind of software that could specifically pinpoint problems encountered when browsing in IE. One solution would be test each add-on separately to try to pinpoint the problem, but sometimes it may take 1 or 2 hours for the problem to occur, so it's somewhat lengthy to test each add-on... BTW, I'm focusing on Yahoo Mail, but perhaps a similar website that uses flash/scripting/ajax might bring about the same endgame.

Report · Aug 26, 2012

Unfortunately Flash has had a memory bug since CS3 as far as I know the problem has never been fixed. We are up to CS6 now and the bug remains but now instead of stopping at the 2GB limit it just keeps getting bigger and bigger as Internet Explorer now has a 64-bit version. I feel sorry for the companies like in the picture above. Great games but hug memory bugs. They will probably go bust if you don't do something soon. Please fix the memory leak. Even after shutting the game window 2 gig remains in the temp area. If I clear everything from the tool area it goes back to normal.

Illustrator also has a line drawing bug where the whole screen goes white when drawing a line past the artboard. The autoscroll kicks in but you can't see the line being drawn. Why do't you work on these problems? 3 full suites later and no change. Just get rid of the bugs instead of adding more features. It seems silly having more options but not being able to draw a line larger than the screen area without a propper refresh.

Report · Oct 01, 2012

Hi Glen,

Thanks for your note.

The best way to get traction on the issue you're experiencing with Illustrator is to report it to the Illustrator team.

Their bug reporting form is here:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Their forums are here:

http://forums.adobe.com/community/illustrator/illustrator_general

I've found it's particularly effective to file the bug, then post to the forums with a link to the bug. This makes it easy for the person responding to your issue to route it to an engineer (in general, work is conducted and tracked through the bugbase), and the forum post is likely to automatically land in the inboxes of people on the product team who are subscribed to forum notifications.

The more information you can include about your issue, a sample file where it reproduces (unless it happens everywhere), and as much information about your system as possible would be good. Modern versions of most Adobe tools use Hardware Graphics Acceleration, and this drawing issue could be related to your graphics hardware.

Without knowing much about your problem, I'd recommend you update to the latest available drivers for your graphics hardware as a first troubleshooting step. If the problem persists, providing the output of the DirectX Diagnostic Tool will provide the engineering team with enough detailed information on your system configuration to investigate it fully.

To run dxdiag, do the following:

Click Start > type "dxdiag" in the search box and hit Enter

Click Save All Information, and attach it to your bug report

You could also try disabling hardware acceleration to see if this resolves your issue (it would be an interesting data-point for the person triaging your bug report):

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/disable-graphics-hardware-acceleration-windows-1.html

Best regards,

Jeromie Clark

Quality Engineering Manager

Flash Runtime - Security

Report · Oct 01, 2012

So what I find frustrating is that I submit information almost 4 months ago, that you reproduced and created a defect for, yet nothing beyond that has been done. No updates on the defect, etc... Actually when I look at the defect in your database it doesn't even appear that anyone has taken the time to look at it.

Report · Oct 01, 2012

We keep separate internal and external bugbases to maximize productivity on the engineering team. When we have a widespread issue, we'll have hundreds of duplicate bug reports. There's a dedicated team that consolidates and escalates the publicly reported issues to the engineering team.

Issues reported are prioritized by severity, number of users impacted, number of votes received, and the availability of a workaround. We have not fixed this issue yet. I have resurfaced the bug to the engineering team for consideration in the next dot-release. There is a very straightforward workaround at this time, in that you can uninstall Yahoo Toolbar and avoid that particular memory leak.

Report · Oct 01, 2012

" I have resurfaced the bug to the engineering team for consideration in the next dot-release."

- Thank you

" There is a very straightforward workaround at this time, in that you can uninstall Yahoo Toolbar and avoid that particular memory leak."

- Actually there are a couple of straightforward workarounds... One being just uninstall Flash...