FP97: Memory Leak in FP Extensions on MS Personal Web Server

• Microsoft FrontPage 97 for Windows with Bonus Pack

SYMPTOMS

FrontPage 97 and the Microsoft Personal Web Server may cause memory to become fragmented when you do the actions listed in the following table.

When you do this                     This Amount of Memory Is Fragmented

In FrontPage Explorer click Refresh   30K per transaction

In FrontPage Editor click Save on     5K-8K per transaction

NOTE: The information in this table was gathered from tests that used repetitive operations with identical data. Actual usage will probably cause less memory leakage, because the changing data will rescue some of the stranded data from the fragmented memory heap. Note also that these operations do not fragment memory in Windows NT, nor do they fragment memory with the FrontPage Personal Web Server or O'Reilly & Associate's WebSite, or Netscape Corporation's FastTrack 2.0 on Windows 95.

RESOLUTION

To avoid performance degradation with the FrontPage Server Extensions on the Microsoft Personal Web Server, restart it occasionally whenever your system seems to be slow or low on memory.

The Microsoft Personal Web Server is designed as a Personal Web Server only, and is not intended for high traffic Web sites. If you have a high traffic Web site, you should upgrade to Windows NT Server and the Microsoft Internet Information Server.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

A heavily used Microsoft Personal Web Server on Windows 95 may eventually develop performance problems. A computer with limited hard disk drive space will be more susceptible to these problems, because it will run out of swap space sooner. If you are using disk-based Webs and your system becomes slow or memory becomes low, restart FrontPage Explorer (FrontPage Explorer using a disk-based Web is subject to the same fragmentation as the Microsoft Personal Web Server).

NOTE: When the memory heap gets highly fragmented, the server process tends to slow down (due to increased paging activity, and heap operations take longer because the heap data structures are larger).

The third party products discussed here are manufactured by vendors independent of Microsoft; we make no warrantee, implied or otherwise, regarding these products' performance or reliability.