memory allocation in Quark Xpress for Windows

[Londoner]

Hi,

on the Apple Mac you just have to select an application then go to 'file - get info' and you can allcoate how much memory you want for the application. You can set a minimum and maximum amount.

But I don't know how to do this on a PC. CAn anyone help me? I have a document which has become rather large and now I can't open it; I need to allocate more memory to Quark so I can open the document and reduce it - any ideas please, I'm rather stuck!

Thanks for reading.

[pam123]

Windows doesn't work that way.
Tell me what you've been doing

[Londoner]

Windows doesn't work that way.
Tell me what you've been doing

Hi pam123,

thanks for your reply.

Basically, all my experience with Quark is on a Mac OS; so I was assuming there was an equivalent proceedure on a pc.

Essentially what has happened is this. I have been working on a document in quark on a laptop and the document has become quite large (not using the PC in my sig, but on a friend's laptop). Now the document won't open. I hadn't realised how large the document was getting until it wouldn't open and I looked at its size and realised. When I try to open the quark document the egg-timer appears and it just times out, or else there's an error. If this was on a Mac I would just allocate more memory to Quark and I think it would be ok - it's happened a few times on a Mac like this so I assumed the answer would be similiar.

Problem is, this is Quark on a PC and I cannot find how to allocate memory.

From what you write perhaps my assumption is wrong. Maybe you can't allocate memory to an application in Windows XP in the way you can with a Mac - but is there another solution? - Basically, the document won't open, even though it never gave problems before, and I think it may be because of its size.

Any further thoughts much appreciated.
Thanks for reading.

[pam123]

Please post the error message.

[Londoner]

Please post the error message.


Hi pam123,

thanks again for your posts.

The error message is not very helpful. It says 'Quark Xpress has encountered a problem and needs to close. If you were working on... etc' and directs me to an error.log in the Quark application folder.

The error log itself is just a massive pile of numbers and symbols. And I can't see anything there that might be of use in discovering its cause.

Does this tell you anything?

[glc]

How much physical ram is in the PC and how much disk space is allocated for virtual memory? What version of Windows?

[pam123]

I sounds as if you have a corrupted file.
Possible cause, not enough ram or a too small page file.
Windows XP can handle huge files so I doubt it's a matter of size alone.
Do you have back ups ?

[Londoner]

I sounds as if you have a corrupted file.
Possible cause, not enough ram or a too small page file.
Windows XP can handle huge files so I doubt it's a matter of size alone.
Do you have back ups ?

No: No back ups!

Using Windows XP. Ram 500mb (I think, or at the very least 256, I can't recall right now).

Currently, my plan is to copy the quark doc onto a cd and find a machine with a big spec and try opening on that. But what you write worries me to think it might be corrupted.

How do I allocate disk space for virtual memory? Can you explain what you mean by 'too small page file' please?

Thanks, again, for your help.

[glc]

Control panel, system, advanced, performance options, virtual memory.

If it only has 256mb physical memory, that's not enough to run a program like that.

[pam123]

Both glc and I think the same thing happened.
Your borrowed laptop didn't have the muscle to handle the file as it grew larger.
512mb of memory would have been the minimum you needed for a really huge desktop publishing file and, even then, may not have been enough.
What I call page file and glc refers to, correctly, as virtual memory, is the space on the hard drive that XP allocates for use when it runs out of physical memory.
This is set automatically by XP based on how much physical ram you have in the system and while it can be increased/decreased it's not one of the better ideas since it often leads to more problems .
My suggestion, if you wish to try, is that first you copy that file to disk before you do anything else.
Now go to START>Control Panel>System>Advanced>Performance and in the Performance box click on the Settings box.
That will get you Performance Options>Advanced>and look down the box till you see Virtual Memory.
You can adjust this but the results you get will depend on how much physical ram is in that laptop and if you push it too far you run the risk of having to reinstall XP.

edit : glc beat me too it.

[glc]

It's safe to set the minimum and maximum size to 3 times the physical memory, but no higher than 4095mb.