Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 1/22/2008

Question
We are using AI CS3 on a XP machine with 3 gig of RAM.  We have a 22x28 image that is fairly complex.  We are trying to resize the document, and after a few moves, Illustrator displays an error indicating we are out of virtual memory and closes down. If you look at memory usage in the task manager, it says there is about a gig of real memory available and there is no change in the page file utilization (flat line) we do not have any other programs running.  I expect that each move is being saved in an undo area in RAM, and maybe that is eating up the RAM.  Do you have any suggestions on how we can stop this error from happening?  In CS2 we had control over the number of undoes that were saved, I don’t think we have control over this in CS3.  This may not be the problem; I am speculating that it MIGHT be the cause.  The file was created on a Vista machine with 4 gig of RAM, it worked better on that machine, but it still freezes occasionally.  In general, do you have any suggestions on how we can better utilize illustrator, and not continually have the running our of RAM problem?  Thanks
Bill


Answer
Hi Bill,

I have experienced this problem with my Illustrator and it really has to do with the complexity of the project. Once thing you can do is reset Illustrator to its default preferences (holding Alt+Shift+Ctrl when starting up). Next, go to your effects>document effects raster settings and turn them down to 72 dpi you can adjust this later, but the higher the res while working on it, the greater the chance of choking it. Finally if none of this helps, try working in Outline mode.

PCs are very buggy when it comes to RAM, just because you have it on your CPU does not mean Illustrator is using it all. You really do not have too much control but I did find this Tech Document relating to XP and Illustrator check it out.

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=320782&sliceId=1

Thanks

Kevin