Subject: Memory/Resource leak w/ Google,Yahoo! toolbars?

[Guest]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

(My apologies for the dual post, but I'm hoping the shorter title might lead
others to read this more...)

Hello, and thank you for reading my post.

For a long time, I've used the Google toolbar with IE6 SP1 and have been
able to open, say, 40-50 (don't ask... ) IE windows with no problem. As my
session goes on, I'd be able to keep nearly as many windows open, but the
count usually wouldn't decrease by more than a few. (I attributed even this
small decrease to what I understood is the imperfect way that Windows {& IE?}
return resources to the system to be used elsewhere when a window is closed,
but that's just a guess.)

Recently, however, it seems that, after Google updated its toolbar to
version 4.0, this has changed. Now, I often find myself needing to close,
say, 2 or 3 windows in order to open 1 more. Inevitably, all of IE needs to
be closed, and then reopened anew because I'm otherwise unable to open any
more windows.

This seemed(?) to be resolved when I uninstalled the Google toolbar
completely but, when I then tried to install and use the latest Yahoo!
toolbar, instead, the same thing started happening again...until I
uninstalled it as well. (I don't know if these toolbars are the only reasons
why this has been happening, but it could be a factor, at least.)

BTW, I'd also recently installed, and have been using ,Trillian for all of
my IMing via various networks, but I think that may have happened before this
issue arose.

Do you have any thoughts about this, what's been happening and why...and
what I can do about it?

Please let me know, as I'd love to hear from you. Thank you for your time
and assistance!

Sincerely,
Bram Weiser

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Bram,

Sounds like you have already fixed it by removing those Third-party
toolbars. It is not unusual for toolbars to be buggy (see how long it has
taken MS with all its resources to develope IE7) and ofcoarse there are
limits to the number of windows that can be opened on your desktop.

I have to ask! Why do you open so many windows? Surely so many windows is
difficult for you to manage and must impinge on your ability to work
effectively.

If you are involved in web research and are relying on the Google and Yahoo
search engines then you may like to consider alternative tools such as "Net
Snippets" and "Onfolio Add-in for the Windows Live Toolbar"

There is also built-in Address bar searching in IE that allows you to search
from the address bar without the overhead of Add-in toolbars. See
http://www.iecustomizer.com/iesearches/

In summary there are limits to the number of windows your machine can have
open at one time depending upon the amount of RAM and the size of your swap
file and any video accelerators you may have installed on your 'puter. The
easiest solution is to review your work practices to make efficient use of
the resources (no. of windows) that your computer has.

Regards

 

[Guest]

Dear Rob,

Hi, and thanks for replying to my post.

Yes, seemingly, removing the Google (and, later, after trying it and seeing
similar results, Yahoo!) toolbar has quieted this issue down, but it's still
a puzzle as I'd had the Google toolbar installed and running juuuuust fine
for a long time until this started to happen.

I open that many windows just because I like to surf around. Yes, I know
there are limits as to how many windows one can open, but that's not my
concern -- it's that that limit kept shrinking much more quickly than I'm
used to seeing.

What I did by removing the Google toolbar was a band-aid at best, a
workaround. I'm still hoping to learn more about what's really been going
on, and what can be done about it. Can you, or someone else reading this,
please tell me more about that?

Thanks again!

Sincerely,
Bram Weiser