COM Interop Component Stays In Memory

Question

I have a COM component written in Visual Studio 6 ATL. This is an out of process exe. From C# .NET I can instantiate and call this component but after the function that calls it is complete, the exe of the component remains loaded in the task manager.

Is this normal in .NET? When I call it from a test app written in Visual C++ 6, it unloads itself.

In .NET, all I have done is Add Reference and selected the COM component in the list. And then created an instance of it by calling new.

Are you releasing the COM object(s)? Showing the code you have that deals with your COM object may help. — Rowland Shaw, Jun 27 '11 at 10:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

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The issues you are seeing are the same as from this question: How do I properly clean up Excel interop objects?

This is a good description of what is going on under the covers: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbrumme/archive/2003/04/16/51355.aspx

edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

Community

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answered Jun 27 '11 at 11:02

Iain

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Thanks. I will give that a go. I had looked at lots of COM Interop examples that don't have a release method in them so I just assumed in C# you don't have to the same way in C# you don't call delete on objects created with new. My mistake. – Jonnster Jun 27 '11 at 12:38
How will this work if I make the COM call asynchronous and use connection points? Is it still the same as C++? – Jonnster Jun 27 '11 at 12:38
That MSDN article give the impression that it is nothing to worry about and in fact it is better not to try to call Release anyway. If so, I'll just leave it or did I misunderstand. – Jonnster Jun 27 '11 at 12:44

COM Interop Component Stays In Memory

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