Facts or generalities about the number of handles?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Knack
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Knack

WinXP Pro SP2; Athon 4 1.3 GHz; 1024 MB RAM

Just some basic questions about the number of handles associated with an
executable file while it runs.

Have trial versions of a number of registry cleanup utilities that I'm
comparing. One of them had only 164 handles during scan mode, and the other
had almost 9000 handles during scan mode. When I ran the latter utility the
first two times in scan mode, I observed an uncanny coincidence that the
laptop computer locked up both times so badly that it would not even respond
to its power on/off button.

My deduction from this experience is that as the number of handles
increases, the system stability decreases. Is that true, or is that a
fallacy?

Are there any other general facts about performance or system behavior that
can be stated regarding the number of handles?
 
Knack said:
Just some basic questions about the number of handles associated with
an executable file while it runs.
Click to expand...

There are many different handles under Windows. Object handles, window
handles, file handles etc. Provided that you're talking about the
number of handles as listed in the task manager, we're talking about
object handles.
My deduction from this experience is that as the number of handles
increases, the system stability decreases. Is that true, or is that a
fallacy?
Click to expand...

The number of object handles is not a bottleneck under NT-based systems.
Therefore, this is a fallacy.
 
Thanks !

Why would two different utilities that perform the same function utilize
such vastly different number of object handles? Is the utility that is using
the far greater number of object handles doing a much more thorough job?
 
Knack said:
Why would two different utilities that perform the same function
utilize such vastly different number of object handles? Is the utility
that is using the far greater number of object handles doing a much
more thorough job?
Click to expand...

Well, it's up to the software programmers how many handles will be
created during runtime. They should also take care to free these
handles when no longer used. A very large number of existing object
handles from a single process may be caused by poor programming or
by a complex application as well. Since your computer was freezing
when running that particular program, poor software is very likely.
 
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