"Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Xmx512M" error while launching Minecraft

Question

I am trying to launch Minecraft with these settings:

-XX:MaxPermSize=512M -Xms4096M -Xmx4096M

But I get this error:

[19:19:13 INFO]: Client> Error occurred during initialization of VM
[19:19:13 INFO]: Client> Incompatible minimum and maximum heap sizes specified
[19:19:13 INFO]: Client> Picked up _JAVA_OPTIONS: -Xmx512M
[19:19:13 ERROR]: Game ended with bad state (exit code 1)
[19:19:13 INFO]: Deleting C:\Users\Phil\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\versions\1.6.4 Forge9.11.1.953\1.6.4-Forge9.11.1.953-natives-13645892457185
[19:19:13 INFO]: Ignoring visibility rule and showing launcher due to a game crash

I have checked, and some say its due to the Java environment settings, however, I have checked, and there are no Java arguments in the environments settings of Windows 8.1.

Answer 1

Encountered same problem with android studio V2.0. Resolved using following steps:

1. Removed _JAVA_OPTIONS from your Environment Variables.
2. Edit relevant studio.vmoptions file specified here in order to increase IDE memory. (for me -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m worked fine.)
3. Restart your system.
4. Build apk now. It should work.

Answer 2

Commonly caused by poor programming practice, something on your computer is setting the environment variable _JAVA_OPTIONS.

Razer has a known issue with doing this.

You can get around it with a fairly dirty hack by setting up your own _JAVA_OPTIONS environment variable https://kb.wisc.edu/cae/page.php?id=24500

Set the values to your desired heap sizes.

If you have Razer Synapse, turning it off will not always fix the problem. You may have to uninstall it or tell it to not start on system startup then restart.

Updating to the latest version of synapse may fix the problem at some point in the future when Razer eventually fixes it. (23/12/2014 || 12/23/2014) Confirmation from Razer that a patch is in the works, no ETA provided.