Android Emulator: Failed to allocate memory: 8 even with 8MB RAM

Question

I'm trying to start an emulator, but I keep getting the error Failed to allocate memory: 8.

There are some solutions to this problem, setting the RAM from 1024 to 512, but when I even set it to 8 it still crashes with this error!

What should I do?

Screenshot of the settings:

enter image description here

Here the error message Windows gives of the crashed emulator-arm.exe:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH
  Application Name: emulator-arm.exe
  Application Version:  0.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp:    4fe779fb
  Fault Module Name:    emulator-arm.exe
  Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:   4fe779fb
  Exception Code:   40000015
  Exception Offset: 0014428e
  OS Version:   6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
  Locale ID:    1043
  Additional Information 1: ea2b
  Additional Information 2: ea2b4716fbf9f89aacc15214fb1537bb
  Additional Information 3: 8d2f
  Additional Information 4: 8d2f162ccf8522e475fc4fbe036a6efa

The last time I checked and the emulator worked was before updating to ADT 20 and before deleting all old AVD's.

try running eclipse as administrator ('run as administrator') if you are on windows — Uku Loskit, Jul 01 '12 at 11:47
And if you write 512 it will fail 512MB will work similarly for all possible values. — Muhammad Irfan, Jul 31 '12 at 07:23

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 01 '12 at 20:08

8

I've had problems like this. The only way to fix it was to set it to either 256, 512 or 1024. I have no idea why it won't work with any random value.

answered Jul 01 '12 at 20:08

EGHDK

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Ofcourse I've tried those values as well, didn't work either. – nhaarman Jul 01 '12 at 20:21
4

What about when you change the Skin to a default value? – EGHDK Jul 01 '12 at 21:08
Hmm, that magically seems to work. Any idea why this happens? – nhaarman Jul 01 '12 at 21:10
Hahaha. I have the SAME problem. No idea. I've just learned to keep it on default. Sorry for the dissapointing answer. Yes it fixes the problem. No idea why though. – EGHDK Jul 01 '12 at 21:12
Well, no problem then, it works. Thanks! Maybe you could put this in your answer as well? – nhaarman Jul 01 '12 at 21:15
@Niek I didn't get what he meant by 'skin' default value. Skin?. Or Theme? – NT_ Jul 27 '12 at 10:13
Look in the picture. It says "Skin" Hope that helps =) – EGHDK Jul 28 '12 at 02:21
1

setting it to default value wont solve the problem if your need was testing nexus 7 resolutions. – Netverse Jul 30 '12 at 17:21

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 13 '13 at 11:07

You need to access avd config file that resides in:

C:\Users\Furqan\.android\avd\Gingerbread.avd

Here my user name is Furqan and Gingerbread.avd is the name of emulator device there is config.ini file there, you can change ramsize or vm.heapSize=128 hw.ramSize=2048mb

Makesure ramsize should be in mb and similarly you can change any thing in the emulator from here easily.

     avd.ini.encoding=ISO-8859-1
     hw.sdCard=no
     hw.device.manufacturer=Google
     hw.mainKeys=yes
     hw.lcd.density=320
     hw.accelerometer=yes
     hw.dPad=yes
     hw.cpu.arch=arm
     skin.name=720x1280
     abi.type=armeabi
     hw.device.hash=-708107041
     hw.trackBall=no
     hw.device.name=Galaxy Nexus
     hw.camera.back=emulated
     hw.sensors.proximity=yes
     hw.battery=yes
     disk.dataPartition.size=200M
     image.sysdir.1=platforms\android-10\images\
     hw.audioInput=yes
     hw.sensors.orientation=yes
     hw.camera.front=emulated
     hw.gps=yes
     skin.dynamic=yes
     skin.path=720x1280
     hw.keyboard=yes
     vm.heapSize=128
     hw.ramSize=2048mb

Note: hw.ramSize put mb in small case as upper case didnt work for me.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 30 '12 at 22:35

Under Windows, no matter how much RAM you have in the PC, it seems setting the emulator around 900MB is about the max it can handle. 1024MB always fails for me with 6GB of RAM and Windows 7 x64.

One other key note, for the device RAM Size, always include "MB" at the end. It seems to randomly works/crashes without it, but works reliably with it. Many pre-built emulators seem to leave this off. For example, use 900MB (no space).

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

0

As I mention here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14420779/1993898

I was able to fix this error by running AVD "as Administrator", with no changes required to my emulator setup. To ensure clarity, my emulator is setup with '1024' in the RAM field, no MB tag needed. Therefore, I believe this error to be related to filesystem permissions, or lack thereof.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Community

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answered Jan 20 '13 at 02:45

Prymaldark

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 07 '14 at 10:43

0

Solved problem with:

Open config.ini (location: C:\USERS\ YOURUSERNAME\.android\avd ) and set i.e.

hw.ramSize=512

to

hw.ramSize=512mb

answered May 07 '14 at 10:43

T.Todua

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Android Emulator: Failed to allocate memory: 8 even with 8MB RAM

5 Answers5

Solved problem with:

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