Subject: Re: Microsoft Edge Is Secretly Draining Your PC's RAM (Here's How to Stop It)

Windows with gigabytes of free RAM complains via a default image
viewer that your computer does not have enough RAM when opening a PNG
file which takes up fewer than 1 megabyte of permanent space if it is
a 1,200-DPI black-and-white scan of 1 A4 page. We do not need to blame
Google for this.

Also, ordering Adobe to order Windows to order an Epson printer to
print a 161-megabyte PDF file failed (without an error message without
a warning) while pretending to successfully print (by printing the
textual, non-photograph-scan parts of many a page).
pdfinfo reports for this file:
"Creator: TeX
Producer: pdfTeX-1.40.24
CreationDate: Wed Apr 17 02:32:57 2024 CEST
ModDate: Wed Apr 17 02:32:57 2024 CEST
Custom Metadata: yes
Metadata Stream: no
Tagged: no
UserProperties: no
Suspects: no
Form: none
JavaScript: no
Pages: 1408
Encrypted: no
Page size: 595.276 x 841.89 pts (A4)
Page rot: 0
File size: 168350465 bytes
Optimized: no
PDF version: 1.5"

I show this Epson printer via
HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/Epson/

If you do not like Microsoft Edge then you are welcome to use Opera;
W3m; Lynx; Mosaic; ELinks; Links; Links2; XLinks2; etc.

Servers which I am able to use do not allow a crosspost to as many as: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.free.newsservers, alt.comp.os.windows-11,alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.anonymous, news.software.readers

(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Subject: Re: Microsoft Edge Is Secretly Draining Your PC's RAM (Here's How to Stop It)

On Fri, 5/1/2026 3:46 PM, Nicolas Paul Colin de Glocester wrote:

Windows with gigabytes of free RAM complains via a default image

viewer that your computer does not have enough RAM when opening a PNG
file which takes up fewer than 1 megabyte of permanent space if it is
a 1,200-DPI black-and-white scan of 1 A4 page. We do not need to blame
Google for this.

Try this. PNG are potential decompression bombs. A black and white scan
is perfect starting materials for this.

https://libpng.sourceforge.io/decompression_bombs.html

For fun, you'll have to locate viewer programs, which happen
to be bound to older versions of the PNG library that lack
decompression bomb "protection".

Also, ordering Adobe to order Windows to order an Epson printer to
print a 161-megabyte PDF file failed (without an error message without
a warning) while pretending to successfully print (by printing the
textual, non-photograph-scan parts of many a page).
pdfinfo reports for this file:
"Creator: TeX
Producer: pdfTeX-1.40.24
CreationDate: Wed Apr 17 02:32:57 2024 CEST
ModDate: Wed Apr 17 02:32:57 2024 CEST
Custom Metadata: yes
Metadata Stream: no
Tagged: no
UserProperties: no
Suspects: no
Form: none
JavaScript: no
Pages: 1408
Encrypted: no
Page size: 595.276 x 841.89 pts (A4)
Page rot: 0
File size: 168350465 bytes
Optimized: no
PDF version: 1.5"

I show this Epson printer via
HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/Epson/

If you do not like Microsoft Edge then you are welcome to use Opera;
W3m; Lynx; Mosaic; ELinks; Links; Links2; XLinks2; etc.

Servers which I am able to use do not allow a crosspost to as many as: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.free.newsservers, alt.comp.os.windows-11,alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.anonymous, news.software.readers

(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

Printing things, breaks all the time. With care and effort,
you can root cause the problem. I used to fix these at work.

Microsoft Edge (first version, not ChromEdge) was able to open a *26000* page PDF.
That's around 250MB. It is a file that Microsoft made, as a "compact archive" of one of its documentation servers. Adobe Acrobat Reader, chokes
when fed the same document, and cannot handle a 26,000 page PDF.
So what is new really.

If you use Microsoft Edge to search the 26000 page document, for a
"nonexistent word", it takes eight minutes, but it survives
for the duration of the search. When you exit the Microsoft Edge instance,
the garbage collector runs on a single thread for 30 seconds or longer,
as the memory used to do that, is returned to the system. No new processes
can be launched on Windows, until the garbage collector run finishes.

In some cases, the PDF tools that Microsoft used, were written by Adobe.
Today, it's hard to say who writes this stuff. It could be a FOSS
interpreter today. For example, right now, my Windows 11 has a
copy of FOSS libarchive for handling things like .7z files.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Subject: Re: Microsoft Edge Is Secretly Draining Your PC's RAM (Here's How to Stop It)

Dear Paul:

Thanks for these insights!
(S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)