[I finally found the correct address that I am subscribed to this list via]

Just so you don't think you're "Pat Malone", I have all these same problems and have had them since I started using webtest years ago. Yes, I have tried all the tips given so far (except the UTF one, that's a new one to me) and I still get the memory usage accumulating until the cpu finally is doing nothing but trying to manage memory and there endeth the tests. "kaboom". Yes I have a medium (not huge, not trivial) amount of tests doing very ordinary things; no radical architecture or js libraries in use. If you search back through the archives you'll find a regular history of concerns about this memory bloat. Despite a number of on and off list attempts to crack the problem on my set of tests, I still have the problem and I split my tests into 3 large but consumable groups run via a *shell script* to absolutely dump the jvm between tests. This works but its grotty - I would get "marked down in an exam" - so I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops as a success. RM