adding memory after installation

[superpat182]

so i recently created a machine running vista on my external HD and i gave it 60gigs. thinking im good, but like the mook i am i only gave it 512mb of memory. and of course i realize this after i install all my steam games and get everything working. i was hoping to add a gig.

im running a macbook pro with 2 gigs. and my external HD is a tb.

is there any good way i can add this memory without having to start over?

[Perryg]

You can increase the amount of RAM in the guest settings. (the vm must be shut down)
Rule of thumb though is no more than 1/2 of the available RAM should be allocated to the guest or you could have problems with host crashes or lockups.
So depending on what you have running on the host you can allocate about 1 GB total.

[MucDave]

I just found out (through trial and error that VB can only handle 2.9GB out of 6GB on memory. Every time I allocate more (2.99 to 3) VB throws a fit and throws an "unable to allocate memory" error and crashes.

I've tried this on a VB of Server 2003 and XP pro with the same results.

Hope this helps

[Perryg]

That's probably because the 6 Gig is the total and not the available RAM.
Look at the guest log at the top and it will tell you the amount of available memory

[MucDave]

Thanks for the tip Perryg

I checked the Logs and the available RAM on my Late 2008 Macbook Pro is a little over 4GB (out of 6 total), but VB still will not boot Window's Server 2003 with more than 2.9 GB of RAM allocated to VB. I've tried the same thing on my IMac with 8GB total ram and over 4GB available too and VB will not boot when given over 2.9GB of RAM.

I'm using a cloned .vdi created on a window's machine with the ram allocated to 2048 (before I changed it). Would that affect anything?

At the moment everything is running fine on both the IMac and Macbook with 2048 RAM

I don't know

[Perryg]

Several things to look at.
If this is a Win 32 bit OS then you would need to set the PAE in the boot.ini and make sure that PAE is enabled in the guest settings.
Even so I don't know that VBox will allocate any more then 3.x MB in PAE mode.