How to Fix the Memory Leak in IE WebBrowser Control?

my app was also constantly consuming memory when navigating, and not releasing anymore. i fount the solution for me here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ieextensiondevelopment/thread/88c21427-e765-46e8-833d-6021ef79e0c8

for completeness ill post the notable excerpt:

-- in class definition

    [DllImport("KERNEL32.DLL", EntryPoint = "SetProcessWorkingSetSize", SetLastError = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
    internal static extern bool SetProcessWorkingSetSize(IntPtr pProcess, int dwMinimumWorkingSetSize, int dwMaximumWorkingSetSize);

    [DllImport("KERNEL32.DLL", EntryPoint = "GetCurrentProcess", SetLastError = true, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
    internal static extern IntPtr GetCurrentProcess();

-- code to call when you want to reduce the memory

        IntPtr pHandle = GetCurrentProcess();
        SetProcessWorkingSetSize(pHandle, -1, -1);

all honors to: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/mike_t2e/?type=forum&referrer=http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ieextensiondevelopment/thread/88c21427-e765-46e8-833d-6021ef79e0c8 for posting the solution.

and http://ict-engineer.blogspot.com/2010/10/net-webbrowser-control-memory-leak.html for SEO'ing it right, so i could find it ;)

greetings

edit: if this helps you to quickly solve an issu - good. but you should overthing your application design, the pattern you use if any , refactore the thing if you build onto that much longer ....

The BASIC IDEA is,

"Kill myself, and reborn."

Windows will solve all memory problems.

but if you Close your application first, you can't start a new one.

So, START A NEW ONE, and CLOSE THE OLDER ONE.

First turn on a new one, and turn off an old one.

public void SOLVE_ALL_MY_MEMORY_PROBLEM()
{
  System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MyProgram.exe");
  Application.Exit();
}

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTBlKRzNf74

If there is a parameter,

public void SOLVE_ALL_MY_MEMORY_PROBLEM()
{
  System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("MyProgram.exe", "PARA_para_dance");
  Application.Exit();
}

Go to Program.cs

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
        if(args.Count() > 0)
            Application.Run(new Form1(args[0]));
        else
            Application.Run(new Form1());
    }

and, Go to Form1.cs and make another Form1()

    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    public Form1(string dance_name)
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        ...
    }

or you can use temp file !!!

I just created a simple app with a web browser control to try and duplicate your results. What I found was that yes, every time you navigate to a page, the memory being used increases significantly. HOWEVER, this is NOT a memory leak, because if you keep navigating, you'll see that after a short while, the memory drops significantly, indicating that the garbage collector did it's thing. To prove it, I forced the Garbage Collector to collect after every time I called Navigate, and the overall memory used stayed put at almost the same amount after every navigate call.

So while it DOES rack up memory every time you "Navigate" it's NOT a memory leak, and you the memory will be released. If it's raking up too quickly, just call GC.Collect();

According to MSDN, The System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser control is a managed wrapper for the ActiveX WebBrowser control, and uses whichever version of the control is installed on the user's computer.

You can find Dispose(bool) method in metadata of WebBrowser class(Press F12 in Visual Stuio) to release unmanaged resource.(NOT Dispose())

The code here

protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) {
    if (disposing) {
        if (htmlShimManager != null)
        {
            htmlShimManager.Dispose();
        }
        DetachSink();
        ActiveXSite.Dispose();
    }
    base.Dispose(disposing);
}

But if you try to call WebBrowser.Dispose(bool), compiler error CS1540 is shown.

WebBrowser class supports Dispose(bool) method, BUT we can't use that.
I think WebBrowser class was designed by wrong way.

I have a idea to call WebBrowser.Dispose(true).
IT IS VERY SIMPLE! but it's not a good way.

Sample Code in here(3 Buttons, and 1 TextBox need)

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Test_20170308_01
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        [DllImportAttribute("kernel32.dll", EntryPoint = "SetProcessWorkingSetSize", ExactSpelling = true, CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, SetLastError = true)]
        private static extern int SetProcessWorkingSetSize(IntPtr process, int minimumWorkingSetSize, int maximumWorkingSetSize);
        public static void FlushMemory()
        {
            GC.Collect();
            GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();
            if (Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Win32NT)
            {
                SetProcessWorkingSetSize(System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().Handle, -1, -1);
            }
        }

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void addWeb()
        {
            WebBrowserD webBrowser1 = new WebBrowserD();
            webBrowser1.Size = new Size(1070, 585);
            this.Controls.Add(webBrowser1);
            webBrowser1.Navigate("about:blank");
        }

        private void RemoveWeb()
        {
            foreach (Control ctrl in this.Controls)
            {
                if (ctrl is  WebBrowserD)
                {
                    WebBrowserD web = (WebBrowserD)ctrl;
                    this.Controls.Remove(ctrl);
                    web.Navigate("about:blank");
                    web.Dispose(true);
                    FlushMemory();
                }
            }
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            addWeb();
        }

        private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            RemoveWeb();
        }

        private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            foreach (Control ctrl in this.Controls)
            {
                if (ctrl is WebBrowserD)
                {
                    WebBrowserD axweb = (WebBrowserD)ctrl;
                    axweb.Navigate(textBox1.Text);
                    FlushMemory();
                }
            }
        }
    }

    public class WebBrowserD : WebBrowser
    {
        internal void Dispose(bool disposing)
        {
            // call WebBrower.Dispose(bool)
            base.Dispose(disposing);
        }
    }
}

This code can prevent Memory Leak.

In summary, You need just one class.

    public class WebBrowserD : WebBrowser
    {
        internal void Dispose(bool disposing)
        {
            base.Dispose(disposing);
        }
    }

There's an alternative control that uses Gecko (The engine Firefox uses) instead of Trident and works very well with the MSHTML interfaces.

Your pages will render in Gecko, and you'll have complete control over the settings, plugins, security and any other customisable features of a browser.

The downside is that you'll need to ship Gecko with your app, I last used the equivalent of Firefox 2 and it was around 8MB.

I released an app quite a while ago that compared IE and Firefox rendering alongside each other, both updating as you edited the CSS. I didn't run into the memory problems you've had with the web browser control, but I found the Gecko control very easy to work with. It doesn't have the same managed wrapper class that the .net WebBrowser control has, but it's easy enough to work around that.