Freeing up system resources

[weirddemon]

I'm getting a collection of processes, adding them to a ListView, and deleting them from it when needed. All of this is done in a timer.

The problem, is that after a while, the app freezes. I think this is because I'm not disposing any variables.

Here's my code:

Private _processes As New List(Of String)()
 
        Dim killedProcs As New List(Of String)(_processes)
        Dim processes As Process() = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcesses()
        For Each proc As Process In processes
 
            Dim procId As String = proc.Id.ToString()
            If Not _processes.Contains(procId) Then
                _processes.Add(procId)
                Dim lvi As New ListViewItem(proc.ProcessName)
                If strImageKey <> String.Empty Then
                    lvi.ImageKey = strImageKey
                End If
 
                lvi.Name = procId
                Try
                    'Add Process ID to lvwProcess
                    lvi.SubItems.Add(proc.Id.ToString())
                Catch ex As Exception
 
                End Try
                Try
                    'Add CPU usage to lvwProcess
                    lvi.SubItems.Add("")
                Catch ex As Exception
 
                End Try
                Try
                    'Add memory usage to lvwProcess
                    lvi.SubItems.Add(proc.WorkingSet64 / 1024 & " K")
                Catch ex As Exception
 
                End Try
                Try
                    'Add the companies name to the lvwProcess, also known as the Vendor Name
                    lvi.SubItems.Add(proc.MainModule.FileVersionInfo.CompanyName)
                Catch ex As Exception
 
                End Try
                Try
                    lvi.SubItems.Add(proc.MainModule.FileVersionInfo.FileDescription)
                Catch ex As Exception
 
                End Try
                Try
                    'Adds the image path to the lvwProcess
                    lvi.SubItems.Add(proc.MainModule.FileName)
                Catch ex As Exception
 
                End Try
 
                lvwProcess.Items.Add(lvi)
 
            Else
                killedProcs.Remove(procId)
            End If
 
        Next
 
        'remove the killed procs in the list view
        For Each procId As String In killedProcs
            lvwProcess.Items.RemoveByKey(procId)
        Next

I tried disposing of my process list, but the IDE wouldn't let me. That's the only thing I thought would need disposing since it is what hold all of the processes.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[weirddemon]

I decided to try and force the GC to run and see if that would help. I'm currently doing a test on two different PCs. One with the old and one with the new to see what happens.

[weirddemon]

So that didn't work. Which makes sense. I didn't really expect it to. The garbage collector reclaims unused memory and I never dispose of anything =/

I was also thinking I could declare the variables outside of my sub. As it now stands, I recreating my variables each second the timer ticks and that may be causing the issue.

I'm not sure if that will cause other problems, but I'm going to try it and see what I get.

[weirddemon]

So that didn't work either.

I also tried calling the .Clear on my process list and that only caused the process list to be added over and over.

[weirddemon]

Yeah... I'm getting nothing here. It's probably the way I'm gathering the processes that's causing so much overhead.

I've seen other applications do what I am with very little overhead, but I think that's one of the negative affects of using a .NET language.

I wonder if using mostly unmanaged code via APIs will do anything for me. Better to try and than, I guess