Error: not enough physical memory is available to power on VM with its configured setting

[ar_khan]

Hi,

I am getting below error message when trying to power on my VM on windows 8:

"not enough physical memory is available to power on VM with its configured setting"

Please help at your earliest to solve the issue.

Regards.

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

depending on the Windows and VMware Workstation/Player version you are using, and assuming that your host has sufficient free resources to satisfy the VMs demands, Workstation 10 issue with recent Microsoft Windows 8.1 Update‌ might help.

André

[a_p_]

... alternatively you may consider to upgrade to the latest available patch for the VMware Workstation/Player version you are using,

André

[ar_khan]

Dear,

Last time the problem was solved by itself.

Today it again happening. I am using workstation 9.

Please help and advise to solve it.

Thanks and Regards.

[ar_khan]

My machine has 12 GM RAM and 2TB HD.

[wila]

Hi,

This I'm afraid is the burden of running an old version of VMware Workstation.

Most likely what happened is that your host Windows has installed a windows update that changes something low level.

Workstation 9 is unaware of this change and now it counts the available memory wrong.

There's a few ways to try and fix this:

- update to latest Workstation (easiest) there have been changes in this area to enumerate the memory, not exactly sure at what time that was but if my memory serves me then that was somewhere in Workstation 10.

- check your settings under Edit->Preferences->Memory and make sure that at least the setting has "Allow some virtual memory to be swapped" is checked, you could even change that to "Allow All virtual memory to be swapped" although the latter is very slow.

- search in the communities here for a vmx setting to disable the memory counting. For example this thread: Not enough physical memory available to power on this virtual machine

- start uninstalling your latest windows updates one by one and after you have eliminated the one that causes the trouble, install the other updates. I do *not* recommend this as it might end up being a security risk.

Make sure to at least run latest Workstation 9, doubtful that will help, but it is at least worth a try.

good luck,

--

Wil

[ar_khan]

Hi Wil,

Thanks for your reply and the recommendations.

It is second time that my system has started working properly automatically after 2-3 hours. I did not change any parameters and no setup change as it did not allow me.

My base system is windows 8.1 pro, will VM upgrade from existing 9 to 10 solve the issue?

Each time I get this error message I have to wait 2-3 hours to become my system normal, I want to solve the issue on permanent basis. Please help.

Many thanks in advance for all the help.

[wila]

Hello,

The current Workstation version is 12, not 10, so you are 3 versions behind.

It is difficult to guarantee that it will help as it seems we are not having all of the information required to give a final answer on that.

The scenario's mentioned before would not normally "fix itself" after a few hours, are you sure that the error is not correct?

Eg. that you really have plenty of free memory available to start the VMs?

You mention that your host has 12GB ram, but not how much RAM is free according to task manager. Some programs like for example browsers are very good at gobbling up all free memory.

If you bump into this problem again, then first try if rebooting the host machine helps freeing enough resources.

--

Wil

[ar_khan]

Hi,

The host was rebooted 2-3 times to make sure to release unnecessary resources but problem was solved. It took 2-3 hours after that problem solved without doing anything. Yes, in recent days I have received some windows updates and installed.

Regards,