Set Windows process or user memory limit

Question

Is there any way to set a system wide memory limit a process can use in Windows XP  I have a couple of unstable apps which do work ok for most of the time but can hit a bug which results in eating whole memory in a matter of seconds  or at least I suppose that s it   This results in a hard reset as Windows becomes totally unresponsive and I lose my work   I would like to be able to do something like the  etc limits on Linux - setting M90  for instance  to set 90  max memory for a single user to allocate   So the system gets the remaining 10  no matter what

User · Accepted Answer

Use Windows Job Objects   Jobs are like process groups and can limit memory usage and process priority

User · Answer

Depending on your applications  it might be easier to limit the memory the language interpreter uses  For example with Java you can set the amount of RAM the JVM will be allocated   Otherwise it is possible to set it once for each process with the windows API  SetProcessWorkingSetSize Function

User · Answer

Depending on your applications  it might be easier to limit the memory the language interpreter uses  For example with Java you can set the amount of RAM the JVM will be allocated   Otherwise it is possible to set it once for each process with the windows API  SetProcessWorkingSetSize Function

User · Answer

No way to do this that I know of  although I m very curious to read if anyone has a good answer  I have been thinking about adding something like this to one of the apps my company builds  but have found no good way to do it   The one thing I can think of  although not directly on point  is that I believe you can limit the total memory usage for a COM  application in Windows  It would require the app to be written to run in COM   of course  but it s the closest way I know of   The working set stuff is good  Job Objects also control working sets   but that s not total memory usage  only real memory usage  paged in  at any one time  It may work for what you want  but afaik it doesn t limit total allocated memory

User · Answer

No way to do this that I know of  although I m very curious to read if anyone has a good answer  I have been thinking about adding something like this to one of the apps my company builds  but have found no good way to do it   The one thing I can think of  although not directly on point  is that I believe you can limit the total memory usage for a COM  application in Windows  It would require the app to be written to run in COM   of course  but it s the closest way I know of   The working set stuff is good  Job Objects also control working sets   but that s not total memory usage  only real memory usage  paged in  at any one time  It may work for what you want  but afaik it doesn t limit total allocated memory

User · Answer

Depending on your applications  it might be easier to limit the memory the language interpreter uses  For example with Java you can set the amount of RAM the JVM will be allocated   Otherwise it is possible to set it once for each process with the windows API  SetProcessWorkingSetSize Function

User · Answer

Depending on your applications  it might be easier to limit the memory the language interpreter uses  For example with Java you can set the amount of RAM the JVM will be allocated   Otherwise it is possible to set it once for each process with the windows API  SetProcessWorkingSetSize Function

User · Answer

Use the Application Verifier  AppVerifier  tool from Microsoft   In my case I need to simulate memory no longer being available so I did the following in the tool    Added my application Unchecked Basic Checked Low Resource Simulation   Changed TimeOut to 120000 - my application will run normally for 2 minutes before anything goes into effect  Changed HeapAlloc to 100 - 100  chance of heap allocation error Set Stacks to true - the stack will not be able to grow any larger  Save Start my application   After 2 minutes my program could no longer allocate new memory and I was able to see how everything was handled

User · Answer

Use the Application Verifier  AppVerifier  tool from Microsoft   In my case I need to simulate memory no longer being available so I did the following in the tool    Added my application Unchecked Basic Checked Low Resource Simulation   Changed TimeOut to 120000 - my application will run normally for 2 minutes before anything goes into effect  Changed HeapAlloc to 100 - 100  chance of heap allocation error Set Stacks to true - the stack will not be able to grow any larger  Save Start my application   After 2 minutes my program could no longer allocate new memory and I was able to see how everything was handled

User · Answer

No way to do this that I know of  although I m very curious to read if anyone has a good answer  I have been thinking about adding something like this to one of the apps my company builds  but have found no good way to do it   The one thing I can think of  although not directly on point  is that I believe you can limit the total memory usage for a COM  application in Windows  It would require the app to be written to run in COM   of course  but it s the closest way I know of   The working set stuff is good  Job Objects also control working sets   but that s not total memory usage  only real memory usage  paged in  at any one time  It may work for what you want  but afaik it doesn t limit total allocated memory

User · Answer

No way to do this that I know of  although I m very curious to read if anyone has a good answer  I have been thinking about adding something like this to one of the apps my company builds  but have found no good way to do it   The one thing I can think of  although not directly on point  is that I believe you can limit the total memory usage for a COM  application in Windows  It would require the app to be written to run in COM   of course  but it s the closest way I know of   The working set stuff is good  Job Objects also control working sets   but that s not total memory usage  only real memory usage  paged in  at any one time  It may work for what you want  but afaik it doesn t limit total allocated memory

[windows] Set Windows process (or user) memory limit

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