Question

Using CreateThread causes memory leak (Windows CE)

Asked by: atomicgs12

I have a rather complex windows CE application that uses some 30+ threads. Recently I noticed a memory leak when I added a new CreateThread to my app. I put this CreateThread in a loop, for testing, and noticed that about every third CreateThread my app was leaking some 4096 bytes, via GlobalMemoryStatus. I put this same createthread in another shorter app, ran the test loop, and had no memory leak via the GlobalMemoryStatus call. I have tried ever combination of CreateThread, WaitForSingleObject and CloseHandle that I can think of and still the leak persists. This test thread is just an empty function that immediately returns a 1. Also this complex app where the leak is taking place has a mixture of AFXBeginThread and CreateThread. So I guess my question is has anybody seen this 4096 memory leak before? Could this leak be related to some other CreateThread issue somewhere else in the code? Any ideas would be appreciated.

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Asked On
2009-09-07 at 12:06:22ID24713219
Topic

Windows Mobile (Pocket PC / Win CE) Operating Systems

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: alexey_gusevPosted on 2009-09-07 at 13:01:02ID: 25277008

rather simple question, but just to confirm: for AfxBeginThread(), do you set m_bAutoDelete for CWinThread object it returns?

another thing - CreateThread() - do you use Win32 API call or CWinThread::CreateThread()? if the latter, then the same problem occurs.

 

by: atomicgs12Posted on 2009-09-08 at 08:24:11ID: 25282829

Additional note. This is inherited code that I am trying to fix.
I do not see m_bAutoDelete being set anywhere so I would have to say No to your first question.
CreateThread is being called as a Win32 API on the majority of calls but I do see three cases where CreateThread is being called via CWinThread.
So it seems we have a mixture of every type of CreateThread call there is and none of them are setting the bAutoDelete.
I thought most CWinThreads went away when the thread itself closed.
How is this bAutoDelete normally handled?
Thanks

 

by: alexey_gusevPosted on 2009-09-08 at 08:29:45ID: 25282892

I usually do one of the following:

- if there are not too many threads and I can store the variable then I delete it manually

- otherwise something like that

CWinThread *pThread = Afx...
if (pThread)
    pThread->m_bAutoDelete = TRUE;
...

 

by: atomicgs12Posted on 2009-09-08 at 13:39:02ID: 25285928

By default AfxBeginThread has the m_bAutoDelete set to TRUE, but I went ahead and reset all the m_bAutoDelete = TRUE every where there was an AfxBeginThread call. Still am geting a 4096 leak on about every third CreateThread in my test loop. I have even put my test loop the forward most call, OnInitDialog() and am sill seeing the leak.
One think I did notice about this application is that there are some threads being created from the declaration portion of the .cpp files. In other words thread are being created when an object is constructed and before OnInitDialog.  Could this be causing some problems?
Thanks

 

by: alexey_gusevPosted on 2009-09-08 at 23:07:11ID: 25288583

I don't think it would be a problem. I did see posts on the web about similar leak a while ago.

are there any memory allocations? if you had the test app without memory leaks then I reckon we can eliminate thread starting functions/classes.

 

by: atomicgs12Posted on 2009-09-25 at 13:47:29ID: 25427104

No memory allocations. The test app did not incorporate MFC. I am suspecting somekind of memory lead due to using MFC and mixing the CreateThread/AFXBeginThread calls.

 

by: atomicgs12Posted on 2009-11-03 at 14:39:28ID: 31625789

DId not really address my main question. Solved the solution myself. Only assigning points to close this item.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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