---
title: "Solving those nasty \"Out Of Memory\" problems"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/3/31/solving-those-nasty-quotout-of-memoryquot-problems.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/3/31/solving-those-nasty-quotout-of-memoryquot-problems.html"
published: "2006-03-31T01:05:00"
updated: "2006-03-31T01:05:00"
tags: ["Tips & Tricks"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "This came up on the win-tech-off-topic mailing list the other day and I'm writing it down here so that I can explorer it further later on. I'm interested because I like to run *lots and lots* of programs at the same…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Solving those nasty "Out Of Memory" problems

By Roy Osherove March 31, 2006 In [Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

**Historical article** · Originally published March 31, 2006; technical details may be outdated.

This came up on the win-tech-off-topic mailing list the other day and I'm writing it down here so that I can explorer it further later on. I'm interested because I like to run \*lots and lots\* of programs at the same time. Lately though, instead of opening 50 Explorer windows and 50 Internet Explorers I just use [Total Commander](http://www.ghisler.com/) and [Avant Browser](http://www.avantbrowser.com/) with Tabbed Browsing. It's sooo much easier!.

Nevertheless...

Here are two KB articles that talk about why and how the issues of low memory can occur on the "desktop heap", and more specifically **how you can put a magic value in the Registry to help a little**. Try at your own risk!

- ["Out of Memory" error message appears when you have a large number of programs running](http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;126962)
- [PRB: User32.dll or Kernel32.dll fails to initialize](http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;184802)

Possible "good" values people had talked about on the list were:

- SharedSection=4096,8192,5
- SharedSection=1024,8192,384

**\*read carefully first and try at your own risk!\***

## More in Tips & Tricks

[All posts in Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

- Jun 25, 2007

    ### [Unit Test Tip: Encode test data as part of your test xml comments](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/25/unit-test-tip-encode-test-data-as-part-of-your-test-xml-comm.html)

- Jun 25, 2007

    ### [ThreadTester with new Ability: StopWhenTrue() and thread polling](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/25/threadtester-with-new-ability-stopwhentrue-and-thread-pollin.html)

- Mar 16, 2006

    ### [Nice Google Desktop Trick](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/3/16/nice-google-desktop-trick.html)

- Feb 9, 2006

    ### [Ask The Pros - Keyboard Shortcut Junkies (and some extra shortcuts from me)](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/2/9/ask-the-pros-keyboard-shortcut-junkies-and-some-extra-shortc.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### Contact

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/