Windows 10 - RS4/1803 - Command prompt error: "Not enough memory resources are available to process this command"
Opening a command prompt (cmd.exe) when booted from the Windows 10 (1803) ADK WinPE, WinRE, or when booted from the Windows 10 1803 install media you will encounter the following error:
"Not enough memory resources are available to process this command"
If you open a command prompt on your machine (not booted to one of the environments outlined above), you will see a copyright string that looks like:
“(c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.”.
During a refactoring of the components responsible for keeping these copyright strings, a resource file was accidentally not included. As a result, when the command prompt goes to read the string, it cannot find it, and the code assumes the reason the string was not found is due to a low memory condition.
What you should know:
- There is no low memory condition. It is just a bad error message.
- This issue has no impact on any functionality
- This error can be safely ignored.
- This error has been corrected in the next version of Windows 10 (RS5).
- If you are seeing this error and you are not booted into a RS4 pre-install environment, this is not your issue.
If you encounter this error, and it caused anything, e.g. confusion, outrage, stopped a deployment, etc., please leave a comment. We are trying to determine if it makes sense to backport the RS5 fix to RS4.
Thanks!