Out of memory

If games show out of memory, the quickest Windows checks are:

1. Close apps that are using a lot of memory
   • Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager.
   • Open the Details tab.
   • Right-click a column header > Select Columns.
   • Turn on Commit size > OK.
   • Sort by Commit size so the largest memory users are at the top.
   • Close apps that are using a lot of memory and are not needed.
   • If vmmem.exe is high, shut down the virtual machine using that memory.
   • If the biggest memory users are system processes, the safest step is to restart the PC.
2. Check free disk space
   • Low disk space can contribute to out-of-memory conditions.
   • Make sure the system drive has free space available.
3. Reduce what is loaded at the same time
   • Close unnecessary documents, browser windows, launchers, and background apps before starting a game.
4. If Device Manager shows Code 3 for hardware, update the device driver
   • Open Device Manager.
   • Right-click the affected device.
   • Select Update Driver.
5. If the PC becomes unstable or windows stop drawing correctly, check for desktop heap exhaustion
   • Open Event Viewer and look in the System log for Event ID 243 from Win32k.
   • This can happen when many windows are open at once and can cause graphical glitches and generic out-of-memory errors.
6. If this happens often, more RAM may be needed
   • Insufficient physical memory can cause out-of-memory errors for games and devices.

• Visual Studio might become unresponsive if the system runs out of memory
• # BC2004: Out of memory
• Code 3 - CM_PROB_OUT_OF_MEMORY
• Fix desktop heap allocation failures causing out of memory errors