I upgraded to SW2009 4.0 this WEEK. After installing, SolidWorkswould crash several times a day, or wouldn't allow you to print, orsave files, or open other applications, or it would crash otherapplications. I would get a persistant pop-up error that said "Youare low on Desktop Application Resources", even though I was onlyrunning SolidWorks.

I searched SolidWorks.com, the forums, and the web for an answer. Ifound the usual "need more memory", "upgrade your 3 year oldcomputer", "do a clean re-install of SolidWorks", and "update yourvideo driver". So I installed more memory and re-installedSolidWorks- with no improvement.

After a couple of days of further searching the web, I found anarticle on "Desktop Heap". This is a registry entry that allocatesmemory for windows. One article that I read suggested that MSOutlook may be one of the reasons for desktop resource starving.

So I changed one number in the registry and SolidWorks is "working"and playing nice with other applications.

Microsoft.com has information on "desktop heap", but there's abetter article here:
The following How-To describes the process:
http://www.techarp.com/showart...aspx?artno=238&pgno=1

The registry folder is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\SubSystems

The Name of the variable is: Windows

In the Data string, there is a value called"SharedSection=1024,3072,512".

I changed this to "SharedSection=1024,4096,512"

Don

SW2009 4.0
Windows XP Pro SP3
Dell Precision 380
5Gig Ram
ATI FireGL V3100
SolidworksAdministration