Serial Monitor and IDE lockup while streaming data

I was just wondering if anyone else has ever seen this problem before where the Serial Monitor and the IDE lockup while streaming data to Serial Monitor. The only way to recover is from Task Manager doing an End Process because even the Close/X buttons don't work. I'm using Windows 7 and it's a Duem. not an UNO.

Here's a few things that I've discovered:

  1. The microntroller is still running because I can monitor the I2C communication on my scope.
  2. It's not a function of memory because I can use a small sketch and large sketch with lots of Serial Prints or just a few Serial prints and the problem is the same.
  3. Some times it locks up in 20 minutes but most times it locks up after several hours.
  4. I have tried 3 separate computers all running Windows 7 (I don't have any XP computers handy)
  5. I have tried it with version 22 and 18 and there is no difference
  6. I can vary the time between Serial Prints from a few milliseconds to several seconds but it doesn't make a difference
  7. The TX light on the Arduino does not light up when it freezes either
  8. I don't recall ever having this problem when I was using XP

Another thing I've noticed is that when I open and close Serial Monitor it doesn't seem to do an auto reset. I have a 5 second delay in setup but when I reopen Serial Monitor it's still streaming data. I verified with my scope there is no reset signal being sent. I'm kind of at loss and was wondering if anyone else has seen this.

I think this is your computer running out of memory because the serial monitor is using it all up (or more specifically the Java system is asking for more and more till everything grinds to a halt.)

It could be that the Java process itself has a heap size limit that's being hit so that Java only siezes up. This would only affect the IDE and not the rest of the machine.