Guild Wars 2

I recently reformatted my computer and installed Vista 32-bit. Since then, I’m getting frequent “Out of Memory” crashes. Apparently, this is due to running a 32-bit system with 4GB of RAM. Is there a workaround other than installing a 64-bit OS? If not, is there a way to upgrade a current 32-bit system to 64-bit without a) having to buy a full version of a new OS and b) reformatting from scratch?

Note: I have a single 4GB RAM card and a vid card with 1GB on-board RAM. Dropping to 2GB of RAM is not an option…not going to intentionally hinder my computer.

What OS were you using before you reformatted and didn’t you choose to hinder your computer just by installing vista 32-bit.

I don’t think you can upgrade from 32 to 64 bit without reformatting.

Reformating is a good idea. Trying to get aruond it can cause a host of problems. it doesnt take long to reformat and reinstall stuff onto a computer. Specialy if u have ur data organised.

You can update from 32 to 64 for free using the microsft website, just use ur current 32bit code and choose to downlaod and install the 64bit version. But u will need to reformat or use a dual OS boot option.

However i advise u ‘aquire’ windows 7. Vista isnt the best OS, even with all its updates, Windows 7 is still better. Get ahold of W7 64bit.

“That 32-bit editions of Windows starting with Windows Vista are limited to 4GB is not because of any technical constraint on 32-bit operating systems. The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code.”

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unawave.de%2Fwindows-7-tipps%2F4-gb-patch-selber-machen.html&langpair=de|en

It’s alot of hassle to begin with,basically you can enable the use of more then 4gb on a 32bit machine,to some extend.Google around if you think you want to try that out.

Just want to add,if you have absolutey no clue about this stuff,Do not try it out Let someone who does,do it for you..or simply switch to 64b,but that’s costly,i understand.

Caedmon.6798:

“That 32-bit editions of Windows starting with Windows Vista are limited to 4GB is not because of any technical constraint on 32-bit operating systems. The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code.”

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unawave.de%2Fwindows-7-tipps%2F4-gb-patch-selber-machen.html&langpair=de|en

It’s alot of hassle to begin with,basically you can enable the use of more then 4gb on a 32bit machine,to some extend.Google around if you think you want to try that out.

Just want to add,if you have absolutey no clue about this stuff,Do not try it out Let someone who does,do it for you..or simply switch to 64b,but that’s costly,i understand.

32bit Architectures are limited to 4GB it is not a set limit but a physical limit, 2^32 = 4294967296 bytes (4096MB) the patch you refer to unlocks a technology called Physical Address Extension (PAE) which on some processors (i.e. pentiums which actually are 36bit processors limited at 32bit) unlocks the full 36bit physical architecture allowing the processor to physically see upto 64GB of addressable space.

The patch will not work with processors that have a physical architecture of 32bit as their limit will be restrained to 4GB by the hardware. Not because Microsoft doesn’t want you to use more, but because it is physically impossible for the hardware to achieve any higher amounts.

Also enabling PAE will have no effect what so ever on Guild Wars as it is still on a 32bit operating system and is still limited to a 2GB User Space of addressable memory (this is what actually causes the crash). The crash happens because the game cannot allocate any more User Space, The work around for this is to increase the user space from 2GB to 3GB using the “/3gb” boot parameter. However this may or may not cause other problems of its own, as to increase the user space you also have to decrease kernel space.

The reason these crashes do not happen on 64bit operating systems (even 64bit systems with only 3GB ram) is because the game has access to a larger user space by default and therefor can use more than 2GB if it needs to.

I know,it’s just worth a shot for the OP to atleast try it out if he knows how to ,or otherwise let someone else do it for him.Since he is asking for a workaround without the need to buy 64bit.And this is the only, “workaround”.

Caedmon.6798:

I know,it’s just worth a shot for the OP to atleast try it out if he knows how to ,or otherwise let someone else do it for him.Since he is asking for a workaround without the need to buy 64bit.And this is the only, “workaround”.

As I said above the outcome would be the same, even if windows 32bit could access 10 -billion- GBs of memory it would make no difference to the game on a 32bit OS, this is because on 32bit operating systems they are restricted to a 2GB allocation limit per user-mode process for applications to use. The problem is not the hardware being able to allocate all physical memory. It is the application being limited to a total of 2GB of allocated memory.

The workaround that is required to help against this problem is this:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2007/03/23/memory-management-demystifying-3gb.aspx

To expand on the above; I’ve tried a pae kernel hack. It did indeed not solve anything. If anything, GW2 picked up a habit of randomly freezing. Mainly when typing or opening the guild roster. The thing Nitro linked does work. Haven’t had any errors anymore since I’ve used the “bcdedit /set increaseuserva 3072” in prompt. (and threw out the kernel hack again)

A lot of rather pointless advice in this thread, no offence chaps but it is.

“out of memory” error can be solved bloody easily.

Go to the games shortcut and open the properties menu. Click on the compatability tab, and select the these three options;

1. Set compatability mode to Windows XP sp3
2. Tick the box marked “disable visual styles”
3. Tick the box marked “disable desktop composition”

Job done – no more out of memory errors, its that simple.

You can also try disabling Large-Address Aware (LAA) on GW2’s executable (have to either use VS or there’s a free app somewhere that can do it)

Lexandro.1456:

A lot of rather pointless advice in this thread, no offence chaps but it is.

“out of memory” error can be solved bloody easily.

Go to the games shortcut and open the properties menu. Click on the compatability tab, and select the these three options;

1. Set compatability mode to Windows XP sp3
2. Tick the box marked “disable visual styles”
3. Tick the box marked “disable desktop composition”

Job done – no more out of memory errors, its that simple.

It is not pointless at all, there is more than one way to cause the game client to report an out of memory error. One way is to run out of memory of the allocated 2GB limit to the guild wars process.

If doing what you quoted above worked for you then thats great, however that would point to another problem were more likely your computer was running low in memory as a whole. Disabling visual styles and desktop composition would not increase the allocation of memory to Guild Wars 2 but rather free up system resources that could then be used by Guild Wars 2 without running out of memory.