VM will not start on Windows 11

Question

My Windows 11 VM will not start. The error says my system does not have enough memory.

The articles listed are all for Windows Server and I am trying this on Windows 11. Even with all my apps - Outlook, Edge, Teams, Word, etc - shut down I still do not have enough memory free to launch even a 2 GB VM. I have also tried increasing the memory weight to favor the VM and this does nothing.

My computer has 8 GB of RAM. Is Win 11 really so intensive that I cannot start a 4 GB VM?

What else can I try?

Thanks

Answer 1

It's possible that your Windows 11 VM is not starting due to insufficient memory. This can occur even if Task Manager indicates that there's sufficient available memory. This is because when Windows starts, the Hyper-V host dynamically reserves the minimum amount of memory that's required to run the host operating system and any applications. The remaining memory is available to virtual machines. However, this quantity differs from what is displayed in Task Manager as "available memory." Therefore, the virtual machine may not start even if the Hyper-V host appears to have sufficient memory according to Task Manager. To accurately check the available memory for virtual machines, you can use the performance object and counter name mentioned in this article.

To start the virtual machine, either free up sufficient memory on the host or resize the virtual machine based on availability according to the performance counter mentioned in the article.

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References:

• Virtual machine that's running on Windows Server 2012 R2 doesn't start