CrystalReportViewer 2008 does not release GDI objects after closing.

Question

We need help in resolving an issue with a WinForms application we have developed that makes use of the Crystal Reports 2008 viewer control to both generate reports based on various parameters the user supplies and to view these same reports having been previously saved in crystal 2008 format.
The issue we are seeing is that GDI objects are being created during the report generation process but some are not being released when the report viewer window is closed down. This leads to the system running out of GDI objects (seen by using the Windows task manager) and ultimately the application crashes. It is only when the application is closed completely that GDI resources are returned to the system.
In an effort to isolate the cause of this problem we created a much simplified WinForms application that simply allowed us to systematically open and close a WinForm  that contains a CrystalReportViewer  to display one of our example reports. We found that the behaviour is the same for this application too.
Browsing the crystal reports forums reveals there have been a few questions about u201Cmemory leaksu201D like this (see "Thread: CrystalReportViewer memory usage increases until out of memory" as an example) and there has been a good deal of talk about manually "disposing" of report documents and viewers but trying this does not correct this issue
The extent of the "GDI Object leak" does depend upon the kind of report that is pulled in. One report we have that is 360 pages long and contains graphs and tables of data leaks 390 object per test iteration.
Is this a known issue with the Crystal Report Viewer and if so is there an update or a workaround available?
Are we performing all the correct initialisation prior to using the viewer? For example we are supplying the report to the viewer through a ReportDocument object; is there something special we need to do with that?
Do we have to do anything special when closing the viewer?
Could it be to do with the design of our reports? We are using the Crystal Reports 2008 editor (sp1) to do this design.
We urgently need to help in understanding why this is happening and to be able implement a solution that will address this problem.
I have provided the following code snippets of this sample application to give a flavour of what we are doing and hopefully you can see that it is not complex. The example shows the crystal viewer being presented with a ReportDocument as a Report Source ... this is how our proper application does things but if you try supplying the filename of the crystal report directly, the problem is the same.
This C# code was written using Visual Studio 2008.
// ===================================================================================
//                                                  Sample Code Snippets  
// ===================================================================================
    static class Program
        /// <summary>
        /// The main entry point for the application.
        /// </summary>
        [STAThread]
        static void Main()
            Application.EnableVisualStyles();
            Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
            Application.Run(new MDIParent1());
// ===================================================================================
// ===================================================================================
    public partial class MDIParent1 : Form
        private int childFormNumber = 0;
        public MDIParent1()
            InitializeComponent();
        private void ShowNewForm(object sender, EventArgs e)
            Form childForm = new TestForm();
            childForm.MdiParent = this;
            childForm.Text = "Window " + childFormNumber++;
            childForm.Show();
        private void OpenFile(object sender, EventArgs e)
            OpenFileDialog openFileDialog = new OpenFileDialog();
            openFileDialog.InitialDirectory = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal);
            openFileDialog.Filter = "Text Files (.txt)|.txt|All Files (.)|.";
            if (openFileDialog.ShowDialog(this) == DialogResult.OK)
                string FileName = openFileDialog.FileName;
        private void SaveAsToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            SaveFileDialog saveFileDialog = new SaveFileDialog();
            saveFileDialog.InitialDirectory = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal);
            saveFileDialog.Filter = "Text Files (.txt)|.txt|All Files (.)|.";
            if (saveFileDialog.ShowDialog(this) == DialogResult.OK)
                string FileName = saveFileDialog.FileName;
        private void ExitToolsStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            this.Close();
        private void CutToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        private void CopyToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        private void PasteToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        private void ToolBarToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            toolStrip.Visible = toolBarToolStripMenuItem.Checked;
        private void StatusBarToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            statusStrip.Visible = statusBarToolStripMenuItem.Checked;
        private void CascadeToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            LayoutMdi(MdiLayout.Cascade);
        private void TileVerticalToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            LayoutMdi(MdiLayout.TileVertical);
        private void TileHorizontalToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            LayoutMdi(MdiLayout.TileHorizontal);
        private void ArrangeIconsToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            LayoutMdi(MdiLayout.ArrangeIcons);
        private void CloseAllToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            foreach (Form childForm in MdiChildren)
                childForm.Close();
// ===================================================================================
// ===================================================================================
    public partial class TestForm : Form
        private ReportDocument crDocument;
        public TestForm()
            InitializeComponent();
        private void TestForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
            crDocument = new ReportDocument();
            crDocument.Load(@"C:\Reports\Sample1.rpt");
            this.crystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = crDocument;
//            this.crystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = @"C:\Reports\Sample1.rpt";
        private void TestForm_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
            this.crDocument.Dispose();
// ===================================================================================

Answer 1

Hi Martyn,
I tested this and found after using this code to re-initialize the report viewer there we still 400 GDI objects not getting released. This may or may not be a CR issue. Still testing.
Try this also, I simply created a close button but you should be able to do this in your form close method also depending on how you do it:
        private void CloseReport_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
            rptClientDoc.Close();
            crystalReportViewer1.Dispose();
            GC.Collect();
            this.crystalReportViewer1 = new CrystalDecisions.Windows.Forms.CrystalReportViewer();
            InitializeComponent();
            crystalReportViewer1.ShowExportButton = true;
            crystalReportViewer1.EnableRefresh = true;
            crystalReportViewer1.Controls.Count.ToString();
            crystalReportViewer1.BackColor.IsNamedColor.ToString();
            crystalReportViewer1.EnableToolTips = true;
            crystalReportViewer1.Refresh();
The issue has now been tracked - Problem_Report:  ADAPT01301248
Thanks again
Don
Edited by: Don Williams on Sep 15, 2009 11:01 AM