PowerShell - Release ComObject

Question

I am creating a new com object to open a popup message

$a = new-object -comobject wscript.shell
$b = $a.popup(“WARNING“,0,”Box title”,0 + 0x30)

I noticed that the object remained opened all the time. Should I need to release it? The commands below will do the job?

$null = [System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($a)
[System.GC]::Collect()
[System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers()

Does this answer your question? Working with shortcuts (ReleaseComObject?) or PowerShell release COM object — Lance U. Matthews
– Lance U. Matthews, Commented Jun 4, 2022 at 20:27

Theo · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-04 20:03:12Z

3

Yes, that is good practice. By releasing the com object, it is marked for cleanup to be destroyed by the garbage collector.

Actually, the reference counter of the object is decreased and if this reaches zero, the object is removed from memory when the garbage collector runs. You cannot control when that happens, but this way you make sure the object gets removed. See here

answered Jun 4, 2022 at 20:03

Theo

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2 Comments

Bandit Over a year ago

So if I understand you every time I need to release it exactly as I wrote?

Theo Over a year ago

@Bandit Well, eventually the object would no longer be referenced when you exit PowerShell, but i always do it to avoid running into memory shortage.

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