Memory Leak when Audio=WindowsDirectSound+ICH AC97

[Mitch Bradley]

VirtualBox 4.0.10 r72479 running on Windows7 Professional 64 host, guest is Debian squeeze, kernel 2.6.32-5-686.

When audio is enabled using WindowsDirectSound and ICH AC97, memory leaks at alarming rate - the commit charge for the VirtualBox guest process, as shown by the Windows Resource Monitor, grows at a rate of about 7 MiB/minute! It grows without bound, eventually consuming several GiB until the system becomes very sluggish.

Disabling audio stops the leak. Changing to any of NullAudioDriver or Intel HD Audio or Soundblaster 16 stops the leak.

The leakage occurs whether the guest OS is sitting at a login prompt or whether a user is logged in doing nothing at a shell prompt.

A Vbox.log from the leaking configuration is attached.

[Mitch Bradley]

Vbox.log for Windows DirectSound+ICH AC97 memory leak

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if still reproducible with VBox 4.2.10.