Can I run a .NET garbage collection from WinDbg?

Question

I\'m looking into why a managed process is using a lot of memory. Is there a way to run GC.Collect(3) from WinDbg, so that I can focus on the actual memory allo

Answer 1

I do not believe that you can trigger a GC from WinDbg.

Here are some useful tools that I have come to rely on for memory allocation tracking:

• SOSEX -- a further extension for WinDbg to complement SOS which adds !dumpgen to dump objects from a particular generation (great for figuring out what is on the LOH and in Gen 2) and the !refs command which will give the parent refs for an object.
• .Net Memory Profiler -- this is a very useful tool when running interactively but it also contains an option to load from a dump file. This gives a reasonably intuitive way to track through memory usage. Easily worth the 250USD price but they also have a 14 day eval.