High memory usage for small application

Question

im just building a very simple event based proxy monitor top disable the proxy settings depending on if a network location is available.

the issue is that the application is a tiny 10KB and has minimal interface, but yet it uses 10MB of ram.

The code is pretty simple:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.NetworkInformation;
using Microsoft.Win32;

namespace WCSProxyMonitor
{
    class _Application : ApplicationContext
    {
        private NotifyIcon NotificationIcon = new NotifyIcon();
        private string IPAdressToCheck = "10.222.62.5";

        public _Application(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Length > 0) 
            {
                try
                {
                    IPAddress.Parse(args[0]); //?FormatException
                    this.IPAdressToCheck = args[0];
                }
                catch (Exception) 
                {}
            }

            this.enableGUIAspects();
            this.buildNotificationContextmenu();
            this.startListening();
        }

        private void startListening() 
        {
            NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += new NetworkAddressChangedEventHandler(networkChangeListener);
        }

        public void networkChangeListener(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //foreach (NetworkInterface nic in NetworkInterface.GetAllNetworkInterfaces())
            //{
                //IPInterfaceProperties IPInterfaceProperties = nic.GetIPProperties();
            //}

            //Attempt to ping the domain!
            PingOptions PingOptions = new PingOptions(128, true);
            Ping ping = new Ping();

            //empty buffer
            byte[] Packet = new byte[32];

            //Send
            PingReply PingReply = ping.Send(IPAddress.Parse(this.IPAdressToCheck), 1000, Packet, PingOptions);

            //Get the registry object ready.
            using (RegistryKey RegistryObject = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings", true)) 
            {
                if (PingReply.Status == IPStatus.Success)
                {
                    this.NotificationIcon.ShowBalloonTip(3000, "Proxy Status", "proxy settings have been enabled", ToolTipIcon.Info);
                    RegistryObject.SetValue("ProxyEnable", 1, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                }
                else
                {
                    this.NotificationIcon.ShowBalloonTip(3000, "Proxy Status", "proxy settings have been disabled", ToolTipIcon.Info);
                    RegistryObject.SetValue("ProxyEnable", 0, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                }
            }
        }

        private void enableGUIAspects()
        {
            this.NotificationIcon.Icon = Resources.proxyicon;
            this.NotificationIcon.Visible = true;
        }

        private void buildNotificationContextmenu()
        {
            this.NotificationIcon.ContextMenu = new ContextMenu();
            this.NotificationIcon.Text = "Monitoring for " + this.IPAdressToCheck;

            //Exit comes first:
           this.NotificationIcon.ContextMenu.MenuItems.Add(new MenuItem("Exit",this.ExitApplication));
        }

        public void ExitApplication(object Sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Application.Exit();
        }
    }
}

My questions are:

• Is this normal for an application built on C#
• What can I do to reduce the amount of memory being used.

the application is built on the framework of .NET 4.0

Regards.

Answer 1

It doesn't use anywhere near 10 MB of RAM. It uses 10 MB of address space. Address space usage has (almost) nothing whatsoever to do with RAM.

When you load the .NET framework, space for all the code is reserved in your address space. It is not loaded into RAM. The code is loaded into RAM in 4kb chunks called "pages" on an as-needed basis, but space for those pages has to be reserved in the address space so that the process is guaranteed that there is a space in the address space for all the code it might need.

Furthermore, when each page is loaded into RAM, if you have two .NET applications running at the same time then they share that page of RAM. The memory manager takes care of ensuring that shared code pages are only loaded once into RAM, even if they are in a thousand different address spaces.

If you're going to be measuring memory usage then you need to learn how memory works in a modern operating system. Things have changed since the 286 days.

See this related question:

Is 2 GB really my maximum?

And my article on the subject for a brief introduction to how memory actually works.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2009/06/08/out-of-memory-does-not-refer-to-physical-memory.aspx