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I have a form, borderstyle set to none, dimensions 5 pixels by 5, visiible = false, and it STILL uses 2mb+ of ram..
how can you get it to use less ram? for example, if i want no form at all, just an icon in the tray which will contain code, how can i do this?
I guess becuase it is loading the vb runtime into memory also.
to have no form, just put your code in your main in a module!
VB uses COM, which needs to allocate space for itself. In my experience, initializing COM in a simple C++ app causes about 1.5 - 2 MB of extra RAM to used.
when i added a module, removed the form, and used a module with submain and the code "msgbox test" - and this used 3.5 megs of ram. then i set it to do nothing.. and it used 2mb+ of ram in the fraction of a second it was open..
arrgh how can you stop it from using so much ram?!
What kind of computer are you running this program on that 2mb of ram is a lot?!!? Even when I had windows 3.1, I still ran with 64mb of ram, and 2 mb isn't much out of 64. Most people have 128 or 192 now-a-days.
still.. i saw a MUCH better trayer program than the one i had created (the one to add apps to the tray) which was written in c++, took up 127k of ram and was using subclassing and everything.. i just want to know how i can build a vb app which does something like that and take <1 meg of ram to accomplish..
It's gotta be something to do with the VB runtimes or the way VB works. 2 MB sounds like the minimum amount of memory a VB program will use.
I just looked and I have a program called CounterAmp that I made in VB, but I didn't use any controls, it is all drawn with code, and it only takes 1.7mb of RAM. That's still a lot, but compared to programs like internet explorer that take 10+ megs, it's not that much.
Are you running it in the IDE? If so your running with p-code.
Did you compile to native code, or p-code? If you compile to p-code, the runtime is most definitely loaded because it acts as a interpreter. Native code is usually a little better in the ram department because it uses the runtime as a "true" dll file, not as an interpreter also.
I can't give you numbers, as i am not on a VB enabled machine right now. Try compiling it to native code, and running it outside of the ide, see if that improves performance.
I didn't read the other posts - mea culpa.
But - did you know that VB runs inside a virtual machine, just like java? The virtual machine takes up RAM, even with a zero size program (if there could be such a thing).
Every form, every control, every object you reference requires that the OS map memory into your process space to handle it.
You put 20 textboxes on a form and watch it crash....
Does native code run in a VM, or just P-code? I was under the impression that native code calls functions from the vb runtime dll like like any Win32 program would call functions from any standard dll.
Josh T,
Look at my earlier reply in this thread....or.....the short answer, you have it right....
Also, turning off the option 'incremental building' can save alot of space.