Detecting Memory Leaks in C++ Windows application

Question

I have a C++ windows application which has some memory leak issues. Is it possible to analyze the memory leak from the dump using NTSD ? If so please guide me how to do that ?

I have also heard that we can do it using User Mode Dump. I am not very familiar with finding leaks in windows. It is very easy in Linux with Valgrind.

Is there any other better options to check this ?

are looking for any tool to investigating memory leaks on windows? — 4pie0, Apr 23 '13 at 15:46
Would Application Verifier (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20028) be of help? — souldzin, Apr 23 '13 at 15:48
possible duplicate of [Visual C++ - Memory Leak Detection](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2820223/visual-c-memory-leak-detection) — user93353, Apr 23 '13 at 15:53
Please spend more time searching in the future - duplicate was easy to find. — djechlin, Apr 23 '13 at 16:14

4pie0 · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-08T01:54:21.243

see here for details about Visual Leak Detector. I have used it on Windows. all you do in your application is to

#include <vld.h>

and you will see a report about detected leaks in terminal when debugging your program, something like this:

---------- Block 1199 at 0x04BE1058: 136 bytes ----------
Call Stack:
d:\Foobar\FooLog.cpp (26): FooLog::getInstance
d:\Foobar\FooMain.cpp (75): FooMain::init
f:\dd\vctools\crt_bld\self_x86\crt\src\crtexe.c (578): __tmainCRTStartup
f:\dd\vctools\crt_bld\self_x86\crt\src\crtexe.c (403): WinMainCRTStartup
0x759A3677 (File and line number not available): BaseThreadInitThunk
0x770C9D42 (File and line number not available): RtlInitializeExceptionChain
0x770C9D15 (File and line number not available): RtlInitializeExceptionChain
Data:
9C 33 2D 6B    74 2A 2D 6B    C8 11 BE 04    00 00 00 00     .3-kt*-k ........
00 00 00 00    70 14 BB 6C    70 14 BB 6C    00 00 00 00     ....p..l p..l....
00 00 00 00    68 14 BB 6C    68 14 BB 6C    00 00 00 00     ....h..l h..l....
00 00 00 00    6C 14 BB 6C    6C 14 BB 6C    20 12 BE 04     ....l..l l..l....
00 00 00 00    CD 00 CD CD    00 00 00 00    01 CD CD CD     ........ ........
68 14 BB 6C    78 33 2D 6B    00 00 00 00    00 00 00 00     h..lx3-k ........

I will go through this VLD. I hope this will be useful in multi-threaded application also. — Prabu, Apr 24 '13 at 06:10
Never heard about VLD before. 4 minutes later I know I have no memory leaks, sweet! I do recommend it! — Edvin, Aug 11 '15 at 16:26

CadentOrange · Answer 2 · 2023-01-05T10:43:54.467

1

I've had great success tracking down memory and resource leaks with DrMemory. It works with both GCC and MSVC and it's very straight forward to use.

edited Jan 05 '23 at 10:43

answered Apr 23 '13 at 15:50

CadentOrange

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Thanks for the portable solution. Will definitely go through this. – Prabu Apr 24 '13 at 06:11

Detecting Memory Leaks in C++ Windows application

2 Answers2