Detecting Memory Leaks in C++ Windows application

Question

I have a C++ windows application which has some memory leak issues. Is it possible to analyze the memory leak from the dump using NTSD ? If so please guide me how to do that ?

I have also heard that we can do it using User Mode Dump. I am not very familiar with finding leaks in windows. It is very easy in Linux with Valgrind.

Is there any other better options to check this ?

Answer 1

see here for details about Visual Leak Detector. I have used it on Windows. all you do in your application is to

#include <vld.h>

and you will see a report about detected leaks in terminal when debugging your program, something like this:

---------- Block 1199 at 0x04BE1058: 136 bytes ----------
Call Stack:
d:\Foobar\FooLog.cpp (26): FooLog::getInstance
d:\Foobar\FooMain.cpp (75): FooMain::init
f:\dd\vctools\crt_bld\self_x86\crt\src\crtexe.c (578): __tmainCRTStartup
f:\dd\vctools\crt_bld\self_x86\crt\src\crtexe.c (403): WinMainCRTStartup
0x759A3677 (File and line number not available): BaseThreadInitThunk
0x770C9D42 (File and line number not available): RtlInitializeExceptionChain
0x770C9D15 (File and line number not available): RtlInitializeExceptionChain
Data:
9C 33 2D 6B    74 2A 2D 6B    C8 11 BE 04    00 00 00 00     .3-kt*-k ........
00 00 00 00    70 14 BB 6C    70 14 BB 6C    00 00 00 00     ....p..l p..l....
00 00 00 00    68 14 BB 6C    68 14 BB 6C    00 00 00 00     ....h..l h..l....
00 00 00 00    6C 14 BB 6C    6C 14 BB 6C    20 12 BE 04     ....l..l l..l....
00 00 00 00    CD 00 CD CD    00 00 00 00    01 CD CD CD     ........ ........
68 14 BB 6C    78 33 2D 6B    00 00 00 00    00 00 00 00     h..lx3-k ........

Answer 2

I've had great success tracking down memory and resource leaks with DrMemory . It works with both GCC and MSVC and it's very straight forward to use.