Annoying error 'Not enough storage is available to complete this operation'

If you ask Google about this message, you will see that there are a lot of reports that people get that error it in very different situations.

I have got this error working on really big Visual Studio solution. One of the 50 projects has failed during the build process with the message:

Error 1211 Unexpected error writing metadata to file 'SKIPPED_INFO_HERE' -- 'Not enough storage is available to complete this operation'

After a lot of searching, I have figured out that there is a problem with a hard limit of memory per process in windows of 2 GB. This article from Microsoft about Memory Support and Windows Operating Systems. It explains some details about that and contains the tips how to increase this limit to 3 GB.

There is a summary for required steps:

• Add the /3GB switch to your boot.ini file
• Open up a VS 2005 command prompt
• Change directory to the <Visual Studio>\Common7\IDE directory
• Type command 'editbin /LARGEADDRESSAWARE devenv.exe' and press ENTER
• Reboot Windows and Build your solution again

Note: it makes sense to backup the files you change - boot.ini and devenv.exe

Keep in touch and happy extending!