Tone's Notes

Updated 2005-11-16 15:33 Wed

One solution to automatically setting the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch in the copy of an exe that gets built into a Windows Forms setup file is to add the following line to the project’s post-build event:

editbin /LARGEADDRESSAWARE "$(ProjectDir)obj\Debug\$(TargetFileName)"

This appears to work because the setup project takes its copy of the exe (primary project output) from under the “obj” folder, and not the “bin” folder.

Updated 2005-11-15 08:57 Tue

Getting access to more memory for your .NET 2.0 windows forms applications using the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch is described below, but there’s a problem with distributing applications that use this switch.

If you use the method described below to automatically set the switch each time you build a project in Visual Studio 2005, you will discover that it fails to set the switch in executables included in setup projects.

It appears that project build events are not executed as part of building a setup project that includes their primary outputs.

Running a simple .NET (2.0 beta 2) application that allocates 1MB buffers until the OutOfMemoryException is thrown gives me these results (on Windows XP SP2):

A “pure” .NET application appears to be “largeaddressaware”-safe. If your application uses third party libraries, they may not like receiving addresses that exceed 2GB.

Making maximum use of RAM on a Windows XP system with more than 2GB or RAM requires a few extra steps:

·        /3GB Switch

Windows XP looks for a /3GB switch in the boot.ini file when it loads to determine whether to partition the 4GB address space as 2GB user / 2GB system (the default), or as 3GB user / 1GB system.

To turn on this switch:

o       Control PanelàSystemàAdvancedàStartup and Recovery SettingsàEdit

o       Add “ /3GB” to the end of the line following the “[operating systems]” section.

o       Restart the machine for the change to take effect.

·        /LARGEADDRESSAWARE Switch

An executable must have this switch enabled to make use of the extra memory beyond 2GB.

To turn on this switch:

o       Add to PATH environment variable:

§         c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\common7\ide

§         c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\vc\bin

o       In Visual Sutdio, add a Post-Build Event:

§         editbin /LARGEADDRESSAWARE “$(TargetPath)”

Links:

http://www.dotnet247.com/247reference/msgs/55/276803.aspx