Question

I had created a program in C#. That program used about 60-70 MB of my memory.
But when I minimized that program, it required less memory, that is, just 10 MB.

When I maximized or came back to that program it used 20 MB…

Why does this happen?

Is it true that garbage collector gets called when you minimize the progam?

Answer 1

This article explains all:THE MEMORY MYSTERY

this is an extract from the above site:

.Net Urban Legend

It is possible to reduce the working set size of a .Net Windows Forms
application by minimizing and then maximizing the application
immediately after it loads. Windows OS trims the working set of
applications when they are minimized. The memory that was briefly used
while loading all those assemblies mentioned earlier is trimmed by the
process of minimizing and maximizing the application. You can
demonstrate this behavior to yourself by creating and running a
Windows Forms application with just Form1 and no added code.

1. Create and run the simple application.

2. Open the Windows Task Manager and then its Processes Tab. You will see the Task Manager shows your application’s memory usage at approx.
   12.5 MB.

3. Now minimize your application and then maximize it. Check the Task Manager again. You will see the Task Manager now shows your
   application’s memory usage at approx. 1.5 MB. The memory that was used
   to load assemblies when your application was launched was reclaimed by
   memory management when you minimized the application.

Did you improve memory management or application performance by minimizing and
maximizing your application? No. You can find some .Net Windows
programmers who add code to minimize and then maximize their programs
thinking that they are optimizing memory. As these programmers have
shared this technique with others a sort of .Net Urban Legend has been
born – a programming practice based on fiction not fact. This
practice is unnecessary because when OS needs the unused memory left
behind when the assemblies were loaded it will reclaim it
automatically. In fact, decreasing the size of your application’s
working set when memory is plentiful may decrease performance.