Here's my little problem:

Currently I am using a button on a windows form to transfer the contents of a datagrid into an Excel Spreadsheet and view the resulting sheet in Excel:

Each time the button is pressed during the same session (for different queries etc ) a new process instance of "EXCEL.EXE" is added to the task manager, eating up about 15 Mb of memory, even after the user has closed the Excel app. These processes go away only when the windows program is closed. Is there a way I can have my application purge these orphaned processes within the same session after the Excel app has been closed so that I don't eat up so much memory?

I have attached my button code for transfering the data and launching Excel below:

Private Sub btnExport_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnExport.Click
        ' display wait cursor
        Me.Cursor = Cursors.WaitCursor
        ' various variables
        Dim row As Integer
        Dim col As Integer
        Dim rowCount As Integer
        Dim colCount As Integer
        Dim cell As String
        Dim rowcell As Integer

        ' Excel Variables
        Dim excelApp As New Excel.Application
        Dim excelBook As Excel.Workbook = excelApp.Workbooks.Add
        Dim excelWorksheet As Excel.Worksheet = _
            CType(excelBook.Worksheets(1), Excel.Worksheet)

        ' get count of rows and count of columns
        rowCount = objDataSet.Tables(0).Rows.Count()
        colCount = objDataSet.Tables(0).Columns.Count()

        ' add the column headings
        For col = 0 To colCount - 1
            row = 1
            cell = GetExcelColumn(col) & row.ToString
            excelWorksheet.Range(cell).Value = grdFieldnetData.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(co l).HeaderText
            excelWorksheet.Range(cell).ColumnWidth = grdFieldnetData.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(co l).Width / 4
        Next

        ' now add the data elements
        For row = 0 To rowCount - 1
            rowcell = row + 2
            For col = 0 To colCount - 1
                cell = GetExcelColumn(col) & rowcell.ToString
                excelWorksheet.Range(cell).Value = grdFieldnetData.Item(row, col).ToString()
            Next
        Next
        ' turn off wait cursor
        Me.Cursor = Cursors.Default

        ' view the spread sheet
        excelApp.Visible = True
    End Sub

I had a similar problem, only I was retrieving data from several Excel sheets. I found that when I was done with the Excel app, I had to do the following:
     xlApp.Quit()
     xlApp = Nothing
     GC.Collect()
     GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers()
Apparently, the garabage collection in this particular instance needs to be forced. Hope this helps!

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She stood on the bridge at midnight,
Her lips were all aquiver.
She gave a cought,
Her leg fell off,
and floated down the river.

Awesome! Many thanks, it was the garbage collection that needed to e forced :)

Thanks again for the assistance!