Is there a way to get a HelpProvider to release a reference to a Control it has been passed in a call to SetShowHelp or SetHelpKeyword? ResetShowHelp and SetShowHelp(Control, false) do not do the trick.

Our application has a singleton HelpProvider. Forms access this singleton in their Form_Load, but this appears to cause an unavoidable object leak (our application creates and destroys forms over and over).

Thanks again, Hans. I think we'll have to go with making the HelpProvider a component of the form.

However, if ResetShowHelp() is supposed to release the reference, then there appears to be a bug in it. I can't find any way to get a HelpProvider to release a reference to a Form.

On my system, in this application it takes about 3 or 4 iterations of creating and closing Form2 before I get an out of memory error. Can anybody rewrite Form1.form2_FormClosed() such that the reference is released?

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private HelpProvider m_HelpProvider = new HelpProvider();
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
GC.Collect();
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();

Form2 form2 = new Form2();
m_HelpProvider.SetHelpNavigator(form2, HelpNavigator.Index);
form2.FormClosed += new FormClosedEventHandler(form2_FormClosed);
form2.Show();
}

void form2_FormClosed(object sender, FormClosedEventArgs e)
{
m_HelpProvider.ResetShowHelp((Control)sender);
// this doesn't work either:
// m_HelpProvider.SetShowHelp((Control)sender, false);
}
}

public partial class Form2 : Form
{
private int[] x = new int[59999999];
public Form2()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
}

The same goes for all the Set methods on HelpProvider. The object is impossible to use in such a way that it doesn't permanently grab references. This seems like a bug.