This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Memory leak / Handle leak

  • 1 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by la3amon

more options

When my Webroot comes back with its scan report it always says that "an active process has a possible handle leak" and "an active process has a possible memory leak". What's that all about? I am not a techie, so please explain. It doesn't sound very reassuring, does it?

When my Webroot comes back with its scan report it always says that "an active process has a possible handle leak" and "an active process has a possible memory leak". What's that all about? I am not a techie, so please explain. It doesn't sound very reassuring, does it?

Chosen solution

Hi angus7,

Here is a fairly simple explanation for a memory leak: A Memory leak occurs when your computer closes an open program and that program fails to release whatever memory it used while running. A memory leak may also happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code. It's basically a type of bug in a program. Nothing really to worry about. These events happen frequently and can sometimes affect performance. If a certain program is causing an issue which greatly affects your system resources or crashes frequently, you should submit a bug report to the authors of the offending program. One way to check for memory leak is to press and hold down your Windows key and tap the Pause/Break key to bring up System Properties. Most keyboards no longer have a Pause/Break key so you would have to look up the keyboard shortcut for your system.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (1)

more options

Seçilmiş Həll

Hi angus7,

Here is a fairly simple explanation for a memory leak: A Memory leak occurs when your computer closes an open program and that program fails to release whatever memory it used while running. A memory leak may also happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code. It's basically a type of bug in a program. Nothing really to worry about. These events happen frequently and can sometimes affect performance. If a certain program is causing an issue which greatly affects your system resources or crashes frequently, you should submit a bug report to the authors of the offending program. One way to check for memory leak is to press and hold down your Windows key and tap the Pause/Break key to bring up System Properties. Most keyboards no longer have a Pause/Break key so you would have to look up the keyboard shortcut for your system.