QEMU currently needs contiguous memory for the guest memory. Hosts running 32 bit Windows only provide about 2 GiB for programs. This 2 GiB is used for the executable, all loaded dlls and dynamic memory. Especially the dlls cause memory fragmentation, so newer versions of QEMU which need more dlls get less contiguous memory.
Running 32 bit QEMU on 64 bit Windows helps, and 64 bit QEMU also has no problem with allocating a large guest RAM. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1252010 Title: can't assign enough RAM to the VM Status in QEMU: Confirmed Bug description: QEMU version: 1.6.90.0 from 2013 11 16 Host OS: Windows XP SP3 x86 Host machine: 3.2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 dual core processor, 4 GB DDR II (3.2 seen by the OS) memory Guest OS: Grub4Dos boot manager menu Problem: you can't assign more than 880 MB memory to the VM, although with 0.15.1.0 version you can assign up to 1179 MB. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1252010/+subscriptions