Minecraft

Windows Operating System

My tips for running Minecraft on Windows machines.

• Update video driver
• Update Java software at Java website
• Allocate more memory only if you get "out of memory errors"

Allocate More Memory to Minecraft

Thought I'd share my success at memory allocation changes with those who are interested.

Note: I only changed my memory allocations on my machine due to in-game memory crashes every 90 to 120 seconds when exploring outside. Once I allocated 768m I haven't had a memory crash. This memory allocation started happening to my machine since 1.7 beta.

I was trying various configurations to allocate memory but my command window would open up then immediately close or Java Virtual Machine (JVM) would not launch, etc.

I have Win7 Ultimate 64-bit, 12 GB RAM, with current version of Java installed.

I created a batch file & updated my PATH variable with directory of current Java version.

Batch file contains (use your own c:\path2minecraft.exe here):

javaw -Xms768m -jar "c:\minecraft\Minecraft.exe"

Added this to PATH (don't forget the semi-colon to separate this path from previous one):

;C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin

Add to PATH steps: For Win7 Ultimate I right click Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced Tab > Environmental Variables > System Variables > highlight PATH then click EDIT. Add semi-colon then PATH to current version of Java then press Okay.

Side Note: The same machine runs minecraft flawless in Fedora Core 15 & 16 without memory modifications. Only the lack of Ventrilo support on Linux causes me to use Windows to run minecraft.

I've read about other people starting minecraft.exe with -Xmx parameter but I could not get various options to work, even though I have 12 GB RAM.

Fedora Core Linux Operating System

My tips for running Minecraft on Fedora Core 14, 15 & 16 systems.

• Update video driver
  • I use NVidia video cards. See my Linux NVidia driver installation page
• Update Java software at Java website
  • Launch Java from command line by pointing to current version of Java (or update your PATH variable)
  • Example [client start]: /usr/java/latest/bin/java -jar minecraft.jar
  • Example [server start]: /usr/java/latest/bin/java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar minecraft_server.jar nogui

Note: Above commands assume you are in same directory as minecraft .jar files, otherwise, specify path to .jar files

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