Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

Matthias Sack — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:38:51 GMT

Hi there,

we've the error described above on our local server. It's a CPU with 8 cores and 16GB RAM Enterprise Server 2008 R2.

All system tools (resource monitor, task-manager and msinfo32) tells that there is free Memory of 10 GB but if I try to start a virtual computer with 4GB RAM, V-Server tells that the avaiable memory is 0 MB.

Any ideas?

Greetings Matthias

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

jos — Thu, 06 May 2010 11:31:40 GMT

Is the hotfix included in Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008? I'd rather install the real Service Pack than a single hotfix, if possible.

Thanks for the info, hard one to catch!

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

jos — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:50:00 GMT

Is there anyway to solve this temporarily without restarting the server? Any way to have it "release" the cached memory?

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

Robin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:35:40 GMT

Same issue in R2 on a server core installation. Cache is about 2 GB... for a server core ?

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

Steve Frank — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:26:42 GMT

We're seeing this on a 2k8 R2 box with Hyper-V role installed--we're not doing anything new in the root partition. Over time it just gobbles Cache.

Any insight? I think the KB above doesn't apply to R2.

[Tony's Reply]

I would recommend calling Microsoft Product Support. There are no known issues with R2 in this area. What is likely is either a bad driver, service, etc that is slowly leaking memory. I've seen non-MSFT drivers and services lock memory and cause a similar issue. msinfo32.exe, performance counters, and resource monitor are useful tools to tracking down issues like this.

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

Murat Berk — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:23:13 GMT

I started to hit this issue after almost 2 years of usage. The only change I did is install 2 2GB memory replacing 2 1G memory.

So I have total 6GB memory now.

Is it possible that this somehow causes this problem?

I am using Windows 2008 with latest updates/patches as of today...

[Tony's reply] Adding memory is unlikely to have caused any issue. I'd need more info from task manager / msinfo32.exe to help triage the issue. More than likely a driver or service is camping on memory.

re: Why can't I start my VM when there is plenty of free memory?

Martijn de Koning — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:21:46 GMT

I have the same problem. i try to install the fix that you require, but i can't install a this. I receive a error that the installation is not confirm my OS. I have Server 2008 Enterprise 64x

[Tony's Reply] Hotfixes get rolled up into service packs and that is why you can not install the hotfix. It is resolved in SP2. The other root cause of this issue is incorrectly built drivers / services that set a min commit for memory. msinfo32.exe can sometimes help find this offending software. I suggest calling MSFT support or posting more details on your issue.

Why can’t I start VM with plenty of free memory?

Why can’t I start VM with plenty of free memory? — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:48:20 GMT

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