WIN32 memory issue (differences between debug/release)

Question

I'm currently working on a legacy app (win32, Visual C++ 2005) that allocates memory using LocalAlloc (in a supplied library I can't change). The app keeps very large state in fixed memory (created at the start with multiple calls to LocalAlloc( LPTR, size)). I notice that in release mode I run out of memory at about 1.8gb but in debug it happily goes on to over 3.8gb. I'm running XP64 with the /3gb switch. I need to increase the memory used in the app and I'm hitting the memory limit in release (debug works ok). Any ideas?

Answer 1

You probably have the Debug configuration linking with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and the Release configuration linking with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:NO (or missing altogether).

Check Linker->System->Enable Large Addresses in the project's configuration properties.