Unable to power on VM due to not enough memory

[tek0011]

Ive searched for the last 2 hours trying to find a solution to my problem, with no luck.

My VM will not power on unless I reduce the RAM to 2038MB.  I currently have 24 Gigs in this host, and about 5 gigs being used.  I am running Workstation as an Admin.

I did recently Bitlocker encrypt the drive the VM is on but it will power on when I reduce it to 2038. I should have plenty of overhead available in the memory department.

How can I get the VM to power on with my allocated 4 or 6 GB of ram?

Workstation 10

[continuum · Accepted solution]

Find the config.ini that is used on your system - reading a vmware.log will tell you the full path.
Set the 2  parameters as you see in the next 2 lines.
If those lines are not printed - add them manually.

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "25"

prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "FALSE"

[tek0011]

Thank you!  No idea what happened.  Any idea what would cause this change out of no where?

I changed to prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "10" to allow for 6GB.  At 25 it would only allow 4GB.

Thanks again.

[continuum]

Hi
thats is a known bug - it affects some folks only so it may be a bad interaction with 3rd party software.
Some users had to use even lower values ...

On my host I use "25" - but here it allows to assign about twice as much RAM as I actually have

[tek0011]

Keep running in to this issue.  I have still changed nothing on guest or host and keep having to change this:

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "25"

to

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "10"

to

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "5"

to

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "1"

Still getting the error, it keeps getting worse.  Now telling me that I must lower my vm RAM to 978MB

[tek0011]

So the amount of RAM required to power on, changes every single time I reboot my host.  Any ideas?  Its getting to the point I can't run this way anymore.

[continuum]

Do you have any 3rd party applications installed such as Antivirus, Games, USB-Lockdown suites, Firewalls ?
Anything that might interact badly ?

[tek0011]

AVG - Doesnt matter if its disabled with services/processes ended.

I have more games than I can count, but nothing that should affect my VMs,  or at least I cant comprehend how a game thats not running could.

Standard Windows Firewall.  

The amount of RAM needed keeps moving all over the place.  Sometimes its 900MB sometimes 3000.

I am wondering more about these settings:

http://i.imgur.com/SHFqswA.png

When I change this around, the amount of RAM needed changes.   I had it set to allow for 10GB of RAM, and it wanted me to lower my VM to 1778MB.   When I changed it to allow for 8192, it wanted the RAM lowered on the VM to 3888MB.   None of this is making sense.  I dislike being able to find a pattern. 

Next option might be to reinstall Workstation.

[continuum]

>I have more games than I can count, but nothing that should affect my VMs,  or at least I cant comprehend how a game thats not running could.

Some games have anti-piracy- "features" that interact badly with Workstation. Even if they are not running

[tek0011]

Uninstall/Reinstall of Workstation fixed it.