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

10
votes

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!

3
windows-phone-8windows-8.1windows-phone-8-emulator
Have you tried reinstalling VS Express? Since yesterday VS2013 Express is available. I know it's a long shot but maybe worth a try.. – Mark
Do you have the Visual Studio Update 3 installed? That addresses compatibility issues with VS2012 on Windows 8.1. – Paul Annetts
VS Express 2013 doesn't include support for Windows Phone. – esilver
After installing VS Update 3, VS Express 2012 will not launch at all. I am now totally unable to do any Windows Phone development at all. – esilver
OK, after a complete reinstall of Windows 8, upgrade to 8.1, install of VS Express, and installation of the update 3, it is working again now and not giving me memory errors. – esilver

3 Answers

5
votes

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.
1
votes

I can't post comments yet but I wanted to confirm being able to start the emulator after starting the Hyper-V Manager. I was getting memory errors trying to launch the emulator; I started the emulator via the Hyper-V Manager and was able to launch it from VS2013.

0
votes

Closing down some applications (eg SQL Server) did the trick for me.