Removing Flex DisplayObjects from view AND memory pool

I have an issue with a Flex application, one that I didn't build, so I can provide all my findings but sorry for any lack of clarity.

There is a Flex app with 7 main views. And there is a memory issue when navigating between views.

All these views were in a ViewStack, but due to some involving 3D objects I assumed it was too much to have it all in the display list. I'm now clearing all children from the stack and adding/removing them when needed. This gave a small performance increase, but still becomes unresponsive with use. The strange thing is, with this and the original method, the CPU climbs with use but eventually levels out somewhere. Now I'm creating new instances of each screen when they are navigated to and setting the previous variable to null. Now it looks like CPU is spiking when the view is created, but leveling out to something much much lower than it was. This felt like progress, but开发者_Go百科 now the available memory keeps climbing where it wasn't before....

My understanding was calling remove child or remove all children would mark the object for deletion when the garbage collector next ran. I can't see any other references to the instance. My code is along the lines of

this.parentApplication.viewstack.removeAllChildren();

this.parentApplication.viewstack.addChild(new HomeScreen);

I have a function for each button to add a new instance like the above.

The only thing I can see and feel silly asking but need confirmation, is each view extends a class called "Screen", this class contains a singleton reference to some core components

this.model = PancakeApplication.instance.model; this.meaModel = MeaApplication.instance.meaModel; this.meaModel.addEventListener(ScreenChangeEvent.SCREEN_CHANGE, electedScreenChangeHandler);

Would this trick the garbage collector into thinking it was still needed? General advice on clearing Objects from the memory pool would awesome!!! I've never needed to analyze the Flash Player in such depth.

SOLVED: I think it's an error with sound drivers, removing all sound and shes purring like a kitten. Works on my machine fine with windows XP, but not on the touch pad the application is crashing on with windows 7 (unsure of the drivers looking into them now).

UPDATE: Now I'm thinking its not the drivers, tried 3 different versions, all with no improvement. I did discover the sound was fading in and out with the TweenLite lib. Doesn't look like there are any memory leaks in TweenLite as it works fine on other machines. Just the use of volumeEasingFunction seems to consume increasing amounts of CPU until it freaks out. It is crappy hardware running windows 7, which doesn't help.

The first thing that comes to mind is you should be setting the use weak reference parameter to true in your event listener. It is the fifth parameter, so in your example:

this.meaModel.addEventListener(ScreenChangeEvent.SCREEN_CHANGE, electedScreenChangeHandler, false, 0, true);

Grant Skinner has a great 3 part series on AS3 Resource Management that would probably help you get a better idea of what to look for. You can find the details about weakly references listeners in part 3 or in a standalone article written before part 3 was posted.