Get Visual Studio to use (better) more than 2GB of memory
I actually didn't know that a 32bit program could not use more than 2Gb of virtual memory by default. It makes sense, now that I think of it, but I just didn't make the connection. My office computer has 3Gb of memory and there is also the swap file, so having a program using more than 2GB of memory would be beneficial. And I am talking about Visual Studio here, especially since today I got an error I've never seen before: "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation".
So I've stumbled upon this article: Hacking Visual Studio to Use More Than 2Gigabytes of Memory which told me how to convince Visual Studio to use more than 2GB of memory. Also, since I am a ReSharper user, I found this little wrapper for Visual Studio that makes it use a different memory allocation method that reduces memory fragmentation: OutOfMemoryException Fix.
Short story shorter (for XP users with Visual Studio 2008 only - read the full articles for other configuration):
Update:
Thanks to the warnings from Lex Li, I went to study the /3G switch some more. The most important thing seems to be to also use the /USERVA switch to tune the /3G functionality.
More details here:
Memory Management - Demystifying /3GB
Summary of the recent spate of /3GB articles.
So I've stumbled upon this article: Hacking Visual Studio to Use More Than 2Gigabytes of Memory which told me how to convince Visual Studio to use more than 2GB of memory. Also, since I am a ReSharper user, I found this little wrapper for Visual Studio that makes it use a different memory allocation method that reduces memory fragmentation: OutOfMemoryException Fix.
Short story shorter (for XP users with Visual Studio 2008 only - read the full articles for other configuration):
- Edit boot.ini to have the /3GB option
- Use editbin /LARGEADDRESSAWARE devenv.exe to change Visual Studio to have IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE in the process header (editbin can be found in \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\
- Download the Jetbrains devenv wrappers and change the signature of the Visual Studio shortcut to point to devenv2008_wrap.exe instead of devenv.exe
- (of course) Restart the computer
Update:
Thanks to the warnings from Lex Li, I went to study the /3G switch some more. The most important thing seems to be to also use the /USERVA switch to tune the /3G functionality.
More details here:
Memory Management - Demystifying /3GB
Summary of the recent spate of /3GB articles.
Comments
Thank you, Lex. I've updated my post to reflect your warnings and to add some more information.
SideriteNote enabling the 3GB switch can lead to significant system performance issue sometimes. It is not recommended unless you understand all its harms as the author of this blog post.
Lex Li