| Author |
Message |
    
John Strait
| | Posted on Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 3:12 pm: |   |
Are you receiving the dreaded "out of memory" error? If so, V3 or V4 may help you, but only if you are running Windows XP or Windows Vista and if you are willing to make a small change to your Windows configuration.
Note: Please read this entire page before making any changes to the configuration of your computer. If you have any questions, contact support@panoramafactory.com before you begin.
This page contains 4 sections:DISCUSSION
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINDOWS VISTA
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINDOWS XP
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
DISCUSSION
Starting with V3, The Panorama Factory is "large address aware." This means that it is ready to take advantage of a new feature in Windows XP and Windows Vista that permits some applications to use 3 gigabytes of virtual memory. This is in contrast to Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000 which can access a maximum of 2 gigabytes.
This option is helpful for stitching those really large panoramas. It may be of interest to you even if your computer has less than 3 GB of RAM because the virtual memory available to a program can exceed the physical memory (RAM) on your computer.
Although The Panorama Factory is large address aware, this does not by itself enough give the program the full benefit of the 3 GB. You must make a minor change to your computer's configuration.
In many cases, this change enables The Panorama Factory V3 and V4 to create images that are larger than V2 was able to.
The instructions are different for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Please follow the appropriate set of instructions.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINDOWS VISTA
To make the configuration change in Windows Vista, you must run with administrative privileges. To do this, you'll either need to log in with an administrator account or enter an administrator password at certain points in the process.
Step 1 -- Open a command window in Administrator mode
Click the Windows logo (usually located in the lower left hand corner of the screen) to open the Windows Start menu. Choose All Programs and then Accessories. Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator from the popup menu. Windows may display a dialog box saying "Windows needs your permission to continue". Enter an administrator password if requested and then click OK or Continue. A window appears with "Administrator: Command Prompt" in the title line.
Step 2 -- Use BCDEdit to enable 3 GB addressing
In the Administrator Command Prompt window, type the command
BCDEdit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072
Step 3 -- Increase the size of your paging file
You should also increase the size of your paging file to at least 4096 MB (4 GB). It is necessary to increase the size of the your paging file beyond 3 GB because it is shared by all processes on your computer, not just The Panorama Factory.
For instructions on how to increase the size of your paging file, see the September 27, 2007 entry on the page Increase swap file size for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista.
Step 4 -- Restart your computer
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINDOWS XP
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 1:
The configuration change described in this article is incompatible with Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 1a. If you have either of these service packs installed on your computer, you should update to Windows XP Service Pack 2 before making the configuration change. The incompatibility is corrected in Windows XP Service Pack 2. For more information, read Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 328269, Windows XP SP1 May Not Start with the /3GB or /USERVA Switch.
Step 1 -- Back up your system
Please begin by making a full backup of your computer.
Step 2 -- Become familiar with the Windows XP Recovery Console
Before making this change to your Windows XP configuration, be sure you are familiar with running the Windows XP Recovery Console. Anytime you make changes to the configuration of your computer, there is a possibility of making a mistake that could cause problems booting your computer. The Windows Recovery Console can be used to repair these mistakes. I recommend you practice using the Windows Recovery Console before beginning this procedure.
For more information about the Windows Recovery Console, refer to:
Description of the Windows 2000 Recovery Console, Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 314058.
Using Recovery Console, Microsoft TechNet.
Recovery Console, The Elder Geek.
Windows 2000 / XP Recovery Console, World of Windows Networking.
Step 3 -- Make a copy of boot.ini
In the step 4, you will edit the boot.ini file, normally located in C:\. I recommend you make a backup copy to c:\boot.ini_2gb before editing the file. If necessary, you can restore boot.ini to its previous state using this backup file.
Step 4 -- Edit boot.ini to enable 3 GB addressing
To enable the 3 GB addressing, edit the boot.ini file, which is normally in C:\. You may need to enable display of hidden files and folder in order to see this file in the Windows file Explorer:
1. In Windows file Explorer, choose the Folder Options command from the Tools menu.
2. Choose the View tab.
3. Select the Show hidden files and folders radio button under Hidden files and folders.
4. Click OK.
To enable the 3 GB addressing, you must add the /3GB option to the appropriate line in the boot.ini file:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="..." /3GB
Step 5 -- Increase the size of your paging file
You should also increase the size of your paging file to at least 4096 MB (4 GB). It is necessary to increase the size of the your paging file beyond 3 GB because it is shared by all processes on your computer, not just The Panorama Factory.
For instructions on how to increase the size of your paging file, see the January 13, 2003 entry on the page Increase swap file size for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista.
Step 6 -- Restart your computer
Please double-check your changes to boot.ini before restarting your computer!
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Please note that according to the Microsoft documentation, the IncreaseUserVA option applies to
The IncreaseUserVA and /3GB options are applicable only to the following versions of Windows:
Windows Vista
Windows Server 2008
Windows XP Professional
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Windows NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition
It is not clear whether this applies to Windows XP Home. I do not have immediate access to a Windows XP Home system. If you are running XP Home, I can tell you how to determine whether you have access to the full 3GB after making the configuration change; please contact support@panoramafactory.com.
Note: This configuration change only affects programs that are large address aware. V2 of The Panorama Factory is not large address aware, so this configuration change will not help if you are running V1 or V2.
For more information about the IncreaseUserVA option, see:http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx
For more information about the /3GB option, see:http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx
I also found a note about possible difficulties with certain drivers: "On Windows XP, some drivers, especially video adapter drivers with onboard RAM, cannot run with the /3GB parameter because they require more address space than the 1 GB kernel address space permits". See:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/devtest_g/hh/DevTest_g/BootIni_de16d3ec-c437-4628-805f-8945ea598a92.xml.asp
(Message edited by jstrait on October 01, 2004)
(Message edited by jstrait on January 24, 2006)
(Message edited by jstrait on July 07, 2006)
(Message edited by jstrait on September 27, 2007) |
|
