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windows-phone-8windows-8.1windows-phone-8-emulator

After upgrading to Windows 8.1, unable to run Windows Phone emulator without memory error

After I updated my Samsung Series 9 SSD laptop with 8GB of RAM to Windows 8.1, (not even a year old, and top-of-line when purchased last november), I am now unable to run the Windows Phone emulator while debugging my WP8 app.

The error messages I see is:

"Not enough memory in the system to start the virtual machine emulator WVGA 512MB.user with ram size 512 megabytes"

Well, the instant I attempt to run a build, it the machine immediately goes from 25% memory consumed to 80% consumed. Even after I close Visual Studio Express 2012, still it is stuck at 80% memory consumption according to the task manager. At this point, I am unable to run the Windows Phone emulator to test my app.

How can I work around this issue without replacing my hardware?

Thanks!

Solution

  • Microsoft has now posted a KB article with information about how to edit the registry to correct this:

    1. Start Registry Editor.

    2. Locate the following registry subkey:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization

    3. Right-click the Virtualization folder, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
    4. Type MemoryReserve, and then press Enter.
    5. Double-click MemoryReserve, enter 2048 in the Value data box, select the Decimal option, and then click OK.
    6. Close Registry Editor.