Jos,

From the observations you record here one could "construct" a scenario that could be at work here...

First, I wonder just what the Task Manager means by "Mem. Usage"?... it could mean the actual RAM (and SWAP?) dedicated to the application at the moment or it could mean the "working set" of RAM (and SWAP?) for the application or it could mean something else altogether.

I think we can be pretty sure, though, that a 'Minimize' operation could be taken as a signal that any RAM dedicated to display(s) by the process can be returned to the pool of available pages.
I run with (file) Explorer always active and always displayed. I just atarted up Task Manager, then minimized Explorer, and saw the "Mem. Usage" go from 4,196K to 1,692K. When I click its entry in the Start Bar to restore it the usages jumps to 3,444K again.

So I would conclude that RAM reduction on Minimize is a purely OS thing and that it is not connected at all with any kind of "garbage collection" and that it is a smart thing to do.
Since the Explorer re-appears so quickly it would be my conclusion that the reduction shown represents that an amount is 'made available' to the general pool of RAM on minimize but that it remains 'linked' (my term) to the actual application and is quickly removed again from the pool of available RAM once the Restore (or a Maximize) is done.

Something to think about anyway.

>Hi Peter
>
>I *dont* think this free'ing of memory on minimize is a memory leak. Thats another issue. I think this is a vfp/os thing. A memory leak would have been reported a long time ago and addressed. The memory is ok. This is some type of memory management thing going on.
>
>I also tried all those things to stop the flicker but all of them are concerned with painting *in* the window - not managing the minimizing / restoring / maximizing of the main window itself.
>
>Jos