During a maintenance review, a technician finds that an automation script allocates large data structures but never explicitly frees the memory after each run. If this script continues to run on a schedule without modification, which of the following problems is MOST likely to occur?
The system's available memory will steadily decrease, eventually degrading performance or causing crashes.
Overall CPU utilization will permanently drop, leading to slower processing but no stability issues.
The script file will be automatically quarantined by antivirus software due to excessive memory use.
Disk fragmentation will rapidly increase because unreleased memory blocks are written to disk.
Failing to release memory after it is no longer needed results in a memory leak. Each time the script runs, additional RAM is consumed but not returned to the operating system; over time the available memory shrinks. As free memory becomes scarce, the OS must page to disk more frequently, overall performance degrades, and the system can eventually freeze or crash. Antivirus actions, CPU throttling, or disk fragmentation are not typical direct consequences of a memory leak.
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