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.

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 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

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

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.

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.

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.