WOW Leak Launching Many Instances of a 16-Bit Application

SYMPTOMS

In cases where 16-bit applications are launched repeatedly in separate Virtual DOS Machines (VDMs), system resources may be depleted because of a WOW memory leak. Symptoms of the leak condition will be popup errors messages indicating "low virtual memory" and potential system crashes if memory resources are severely depleted over a long period of time. The problem can be recognized by monitoring MemUsage under Windows NT Task Manager or by running Performance Monitor using the following counters:

   Object: Process
   Counter: Handle count and Private Bytes
   Instance: csrss