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Asked: 2026-05-23T02:49:38+00:00

I have a windows service written in C#.Net. When the service is started, I

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I have a windows service written in C#.Net. When the service is started, I spawn a new thread as shown below

new Thread(new ThreadStart(Function1)).Start();

This thread loops infinitely and performs the duties expected of my service. Once a day, I need to simultaneously perform a different operation for which my thread spawns a second thread as show below

new Thread(new ThreadStart(Function2)).Start();

This second thread performs a very simple function. It reads all the lines of a text file using FileReadAllLines , quickly processes this information and exits.

My problem is that the memory used by the second thread which reads the file is not getting collected. I let my service run for 3 hours hoping that the GC would be called but nothing happened and task manager still shows that my service is using 150mb of memory. The function to read and process the text file is a very simple one and I am sure there are no hidden references to the string array containing the text. Could someone shed some light on why this is happening? Could it be possible that a thread spawned by another spawned thread cannot cleanup after itself?

Thanks

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you’re using Windows task manager to try to work out the memory used, it’s likely to be deceiving you. Memory used by the CLR isn’t generally returned to the operating system as far as I’m aware… so you’ll potentially still see a high working set, even though most of that memory is then still available to be reused within the process.

    If you let the service run for a week, do you see the memory usage climb steadily through the week, or does it just increase in the first day, and then plateau? If so, do you definitely view this as a problem? If so, you may need to put your second task in a separate process.

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