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

Question

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!

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.