Windows Mobile: Watch the Memory Footstep of Running Processes

Some time ago, I posted my remote CPU usage monitor. Now here is a similar tool but for logging the memory.

There are two tools: vmUsage and vmUsageRecvr. You may use the mobile vmUsage alone and just use its logging. The other tool receives the memory status information on a PC and enables long time logging and export to a CSV text.

vmUsage is the mobile application that shows you a list of bars, one bar for each of the 32 possible process slots. It also shows the process name running in a slot and the memory usage. The memory usage is queried using a KernelIOCtl (IOCTL_KLIB_GETPROCMEMINFO). I found that API call at CodeProject. I first tried with the approach made in VirtualMemory at CodeProject. But using VirtualQuery for every 4K block inside 32 pieces of 32MB takes a lot of time (256000 blocks!). The following shows a process memEater that is gaining more and more memory:

You can also see the total physical and available memory in the first bar and you will recognize irregular memory changes too.

The small tool sends all data using UDP to possible receivers. My receiver is called vmUsageRecvr and receives the data and saves every virtual memory status received to a SQLite database. The data can then be exported and is re-arranged by known processes. The live view of vmUsageRecvr shows the latest receive memory status and a small line graphic showing how the used memory changed over time.

You can use the exported data in Excel and again produce nice graphics.

In the above graph, you can see memeater is consuming memory in 1MB steps until it crashes. The other memory peek is produced by pimg.exe, the camera dialog, when I made a photo.

Processes may start and go and so their process ID will be zero when they are not running. If a process is gone, vmUsage will not record it in its log:

20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    15175680    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    323395584    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    35    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    16228352    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    322342912    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    35    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    17281024    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    322342912    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    35    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    17281024    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    321282048    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    35    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    18337792    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    320163840    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    36    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    19456000    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    320163840    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    36    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2105344    MemEater.exe    19456000    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    319111168    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    36    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    20508672    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    318054400    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    36    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    21561344    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    317001728    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    36    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    22614016    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    317001728    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    36    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    22614016    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    315949056    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    37    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    23666688    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    314896384    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    37    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    24719360    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    314896384    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    37    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    24719360    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    313843712    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    26476544    load    37    
20130221 06:17 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    2109440    MemEater.exe    25772032    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    314822656    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    27459584    load    37    
20130221 06:18 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    1191936    MemEater.exe    25772032    
tmail.exe    303104    IQueue.exe    679936    total    493723648    free    340561920    
vtotal    33554432tvfree    27328512    load    32    
20130221 06:18 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    1323008    tmail.exe       303104    
IQueue.exe     679936    total         493723648 free     340430848    
vtotal  33554432tvfree    27197440    load    32    
20130221 06:18 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    1388544    tmail.exe       303104    
IQueue.exe     679936    total         493723648 free     340365312    
vtotal  33554432tvfree    27131904    load    32    
20130221 06:18 pimg    569344    VMusage.exe    1519616    tmail.exe       303104    
IQueue.exe     679936    total         493723648 free     340234240    
vtotal  33554432tvfree    27000832    load    32

When a process is gone in vmUsageRecr, the process data is still there. In the following export viewed in Excel, you can see pimg is first not running. After pimg is started, it consumes about 368KB. Then, I took a photo and the memory increased to 1.1MB:

Leave me a comment if you have any questions.

The source code can be loaded from github.