TestStand Memory Limit

[jcollinsII]

When I run my project I get an "Out of Memory" error. I have 8GB of RAM available but TestStand will only use about 1.4 GB before it throws this error. Is there a way to allow TestStand to use more memory? I have seen a similar issue on the forums, where TestStand will produce this error if a project has too many sub-directories, this is not the case.

[sonotk]

Are you generating huge TS reports?

[RaviShrigiri]

Need more project detail to analyze this.

Try to disable reports and see if it still crashes.

If report is the issue then you can try this:

Disable results for steps that you dont want to record especially the ones which are in loop.

[jcollinsII]

I am generating large reports and I have minimized the reported steps already... I am sure turning off report generation would solve the problem, but I need the reports. Just wondering if anyone new how to get TestStand to use more memory and better support large reports. Thank you both though.

[RaviShrigiri]

You can try the following in the report configuration ( if you are using TS 2010)

Enable the on the fly reporting flag and select the conserve memory flag next to it.

[dug9000]

Just to explain memory limitations: TestStand is a 32-bit process so its address space is limited to approximately 2GB no matter how much memory you have on the machine. I think using on-the-fly reporting as previously suggested is probably the best way to go if huge reports and numbers of results it what is leading to the large memory usage.

Hope this helps,

-Doug

[jcollinsII]

Unfortunately, I am actually using a custom process model that does not support on the fly reporting.

[jcollinsII]

Doug,

Yeah, I thought about that as well. But it is still nowhere near the 32-bit memory limit, it stops at around 1.4GB, I would think it would go all the way to 2GB.

[dug9000]

I think it's not really practically possible to make use of the full address space due to memory fragmentation and perhaps other issues. Memory fragmentation happens when the gaps between memory blocks are smaller than the block you want to allocate so that even if space is available you can't get a big enough block for your program to use because the size of the blocks of free space are too small.

-Doug

[jcollinsII · Accepted solution]

I found a free-ware program that will take any 32-bit application and modify its executable file, allowing it to access 4 GB of RAM. I backed-up my executable and tried it out by running a sequence that simply continues to increase the size of an array, it does work, the modified exe used 3.7 GB of RAM before it produced an "Out of Memory" error, whereas the unmodified produced the error at 1.7 GB. Although, I don't know exactly what this program is doing, so I am moving forward with caution. Please let me know if this will cause any major issues. Here is a link to the free-ware: http://maketecheasier.com/increase-memory-limit-for-32-bit-applications-in-windo ws-64-bit-os/2011/0...