Error when increasing guest memory or video card memory

[GingerGlaahk]

Hi,

I've recently installed Windows 7 (32-bit) on my Virtual Box 4.1.8 (running on my Mac OS X 10.6..
When I try to increase the guest machine's memory to over 2048MB, I receive an error that a critical error has occurred.
Attached is the log file.

Also, when I try to increase the video card memory to 256MB I receive the following error:

"Failed to map a memory object. (VERR_MAP_FAILED)"

and the following details:

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole {1968b7d3-e3bf-4ceb-99e0-cb7c913317bb}

Please note that these are two separate problems.

Any idea what to do?

[Perryg]

Actually they are probably the exact same problem. vRAM is actually taken from the hosts system RAM.

The error below is telling you that you are running out of (host) memory as far as VirtualBox is concerned.

Code: Select all

VM runtime error: fatal=false, errorID=HostMemoryLow message="Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close applications to free up memory or close the VM"

With the available memory at 5053 and setting the guest at 3758096384 there should be enough left over so something is locking memory that VirtualBox can not use.

Code: Select all

00:00:00.719 Host RAM: 8192MB RAM, available: 5053MB
00:00:00.879   RamSize         <integer> = 0x00000000e0000000 (3758096384)

Look for programs like Google chrome which has been doing this on Windows.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 184dec89ff

[GingerGlaahk]

This is rather strange, as I have 8GB of memory, and am not using Chrome right now, so I don't understand what I should do.

Could you please explain?

[Perryg]

You may have 8GB total memory but only (available: 5053MB) at the time of booting the guest.
The Google chrome was only an example of a program that thinks it should be in total control of your computer leaving other programs to starve for memory.
I would suggest that you shut down programs and services one at a time to see which one is causing this issue.

[GingerGlaahk]

Do you know any way to free up the memory used by these applications even if they are closed?
I have googled it but found no better suggestion than restarting my computer to free that memory

[GingerGlaahk]

Also, what is the threshold for that error - what is the minimal free memory that will cause me these errors?

[Perryg]

I can not help you with the operation of your host but I can tell you that when you assign 2GB or 3GB of RAM to a virtual guest, the hypervisor program (in this case VirtualBox) will need to be able to lock the amount of contiguous memory you are telling it to use. If it can't it gives you the error message that you see (Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close applications to free up memory or close the VM). Your only recourse is to free the hosts memory in what ever manor that you need to, or lower the amount of memory that you are assigning to the virtual guest.

[GingerGlaahk]

And what about the memory card issue?
When I change that the error comes up immediately after starting the VM, while the other error comes up only during the loading of the OS itself.

[Perryg]

As I said the vRAM or video memory is taken from the same place. The hosts RAM not the GPU. Why does it show faster? I have no idea. While I am familiar with the source code only the DEVs could tell you that.