Most accurate way to measure RAM usage of an application?

[Schadenfroh]

I am thinking of redoing my old memory footprint test comparison of various security products, this time within a virtual machine.

1. Will I have any trouble with activation and such (and is it legal) to use my XP Pro SP2 key to create a virtual windows install using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on the same machine that already has the same windows license installed on it? (my XP Pro license is legal of course)

2. Is the Windows Task Manager's process tab the most accurate way to measure the amount of ram that a process is using or is there a program that can monitor it that will yield more accurate results?

 

[CTho9305]

Do you want RAM, or Virtual Memory size? Even knowing which of those you want leaves ambiguities - for example, how do you count shared resources that other processes also use? On Linux, do you count the allocation of resources by the X server for the program you're testing?

For a simple test, I'd suggest the VM Size column in Task Manager, or "Private Bytes" in Process Explorer.