Can someone explain a memory leak?

Dubah

I'm so confused this game is the first time i've ever heard of it, im not the smartest when it comes to computers but everyone says that my problem is a memory leak. Is there any way for me to control it and stop it? Or is this all ZOS's issue? Also everything on my screen starts to turn purple and the AE's and huge and red with a big x in the center followed by a crash shortly afterwards, is that a memory leak issue?

Thank you for your time!

Hearts

Unless you want to reverse engineer the client and then apply a fix for the leak i would probably say that you cant fix the problem. This is ZOS's problem.

Frough

In order to run a game or application on a computer, it requires memory. Memory is used to store information temporarily that will be called on in the near future or multiple times so that you have a seamless experience running around doing things. When you hit a loading screen, the existing memory is removed (because you don't need it anymore) and new information is loaded into memory for the new area you're in.

A memory leak would be when the computer system reserves memory to do a particular action, but then continues to reserve more and more memory without releasing it. Eventually, the game uses up more memory than the system can allow (or more than your OS can manage at a time.. I won't get into that). When this happens, depending on how the application is coded, it might either crash the application or bring it to a grinding crawl until you close the application and restart it.

You can sometimes avoid memory leaks if you knew what you were doing that caused it. Lets say pulling out your horse took 10 megabytes of memory, but never released it. You could stop the leak of 10 mb of memory if you stopped pulling out your horse. However, this is almost impossible to pinpoint like this and is usually not tied to something the player is doing.

Cogo

Dubah wrote: »

I'm so confused this game is the first time i've ever heard of it, im not the smartest when it comes to computers but everyone says that my problem is a memory leak. Is there any way for me to control it and stop it? Or is this all ZOS's issue? Also everything on my screen starts to turn purple and the AE's and huge and red with a big x in the center followed by a crash shortly afterwards, is that a memory leak issue?

Thank you for your time!

Every MMO with very few exceptions had this problem with memory leaks.

Everquest took months to fix it. WoW had it from time to time. Last time was january this year and was there for a good week!

A memory loss is when an application or even operating system is "stealing" your RAM and makes it unuseble.

I am not a coder so I cant go into detail what is doing it. But memory leaks are still a problem in a lot of software. Not just games.

Youtube had a big one for quite some time, far back, for example.

The good news is that real coders who knows what to search for and how to test what is draining the ram, more or less always fix it. No matter what software we talking about.

Microsoft is big about these in several of their OS. But they do fix them.

Dubah

Thank you for the information i appreciate it, that made more sense than what my guild was trying to tell me lmao! I'm an aviation mechanic not a computer guy i wouldn't even know how to take mine apart and put it back together properly lol...

terryammon

Memory leak is where, failure in a program to release discarded memory, causing impaired performance or failure.

Simple terms, the game using memory (Ram) and not clearing the data it has used, Problem is, Eso is 32bit and can only support 4gb of memory, once the program hits its limits, it crashes.

Funny thing is, the log in screen leaks around 200-300kbs lol but even better the launcher leaks 16kbs as well, clearly showing Zenimax/Bethesda have problems there programmers.

Dubah

terryammon wrote: »

Memory leak is where, failure in a program to release discarded memory, causing impaired performance or failure.

Simple terms, the game using memory (Ram) and not clearing the data it has used, Problem is, Eso is 32bit and can only support 4gb of memory, once the program hits its limits, it crashes.

Funny thing is, the log in screen leaks around 200-300kbs lol but even better the launcher leaks 16kbs as well, clearly showing Zenimax/Bethesda have problems there programmers.

Luckily i dont even use the launcher anymore, not for a very long time seeing as my computer for some reason did not like it, so i use it to download patches then run the eso.exe file directly instead of the patcher. So i save myself 16kbs lol

Neil046

Can it cause a BSOD? Before update i was fine. After update i'm getting them after about 30-45 mins of playing. NV4_disp.dll page_fault_in non paged_area. Up to this point the game is running fine and as i say it wasn't happening before update. latest drivers installed and all.

LameoveR

Dubah, are you using ATI videocard? If so, that's the problem of purple colors.
Memory leak will be fixed next patch tomorrow.

Sihnfahl

Neil046 wrote: »

After update i'm getting them after about 30-45 mins of playing. NV4_disp.dll page_fault_in non paged_area.

Well, they did say that the memory leak wasn't related, if I recall, to the graphical issues.

Since it's specific to your NVidia driver, I'd take a look at doing a full cleanup of your NVidia graphics driver (safe mode, complete uninstall) and get the most recent from NVidia.

esoone

Its really easy let me explain, Lets say you want to make a kickass game of a kickass franchise and you forget to put in client security and remove the bugs and dont ban bots and cheaters and let your gametesters exploit then my good friend your haveing a memory leak.

Falmer

In laymen terms, its the computer code version of not replacing a new roll of toilet paper when you are done with one.

A friendly process always gives back a new roll of toilet paper and doesn't leave the next process suddenly without any. That's what causes the crash.

Orizuru

A memory leak is when a program loads an artifact into memory and never disposes of the object properly. If this is allowed to continue unchecked, the system eventually runs out of memory and the program throws an Out of Memory error or some other related error.

Good programming disposes of objects in memory when they are no longer needed, which prevents these errors.

There are other ways to create memory leaks as well that aren't quite as simplistic, but this is the best explanation I can provide without giving a lecture on Object Oriented Programming.

elwhy

Falmer wrote: »

In laymen terms, its the computer code version of not replacing a new roll of toilet paper when you are done with one.

A friendly process always gives back a new roll of toilet paper and doesn't leave the next process suddenly without any. That's what causes the crash.

I'm having that problem right now. The toilet paper one, not the memory one.

Lifacs

Falmer wrote: »

In laymen terms, its the computer code version of not replacing a new roll of toilet paper when you are done with one.

A friendly process always gives back a new roll of toilet paper and doesn't leave the next process suddenly without any. That's what causes the crash.

Confucius say, he who writes bad code has dirty butt.

Dubah

@LameoveR‌ Hey thanks for the info i am using an ATI videocard but can you explain the reason why you say that? And if at all possible if there is a fix? It only happens when the client is getting ready to crash