When using Spotlight on Windows to diagnose a server, the following warning may be given:
<process> has a virtual address space of <greater than 2000.00> MB. This is close to the Windows two gigabyte address space limit. Medium Processes (Virtual Address Space).
Where <process> is the process using the virtual address space and where <greater than 2000.00> MB is the amount of virtual address space, greater than 2GB, being using by the process.
This alarm becomes active when a process approaches the two gigabyte virtual address space limit imposed by Windows. Processes attempting to exceed this limit may fail catastrophically. Any process that approaches this limit should be closed to free the address space and then restarted if required.
Regardless of the amount of physical memory in your system, Windows uses a virtual address space of 4 GB, with 2 GB allocated to user-mode processes (for example, applications) and 2 GB allocated to kernel-mode processes (for example, the operating system and kernel-mode drivers).
NOTE: Some versions of Windows Server allow users to change this ratio to 3 GB for user-mode and 1 GB for kernel-mode processes via the /3GB switch in boot.ini. Versions that support this switch are:
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition.
Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions do not support the /3GB switch. On these systems:
32 bit processes compiled with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch can increase their virtual address space limit to 4GB
64 bit processes can access up to 8TB of virtual address space.
Thus this alarm is disabled for 64 bit systems.
The process indicated in the error has exceeded the 2GB limit of virtual address space imposed by Windows.
Please contact Microsoft for the best course of action based on the process consuming the virtual address space.
