Android emulator slow & faulty after SDK upgrade

Question

Recently upgraded from API 16 to 17. Has been retaining all AVDs that were added before and they were working fine after the upgrade too. But today I deleted all old AVDs and added few new ones, each with each device specification available. Earlier, the booting time was around 5 minutes for AVDs with recent versions (4.1.2) and around 2 minutes for AVD with 2.3.3. But now, AVDs with 4.1.2 or 4.2.2 takes 10 to 15 minutes to boot. Moreover, it fails to load launcher. When I touch on the launcher button on the Home screen, it loads the list of Apps and displays a usage tip, "To add an app to your Home screen, touch & Hold it" over it. So far expected. But touching on "OK" for this tip leads to "Unfortunately, Launcher has stopped" error. Not touching on anything leads me back to the home screen.

Tried unchecking AVD options, "Hardware keyboard present" and "Display a skin with hardware controls". Still the issue remains.

Answer 1

Yes, same issue on my latest SDK for Android 4.4. I am running the "ARMeabi-v7a", from the AVD (Android Virtual Device) Manager.

Every time I started the emulator, it would crash once you selected the apps screen, and tried to launch an app. The emulated app launcher would crash with

Unfortunately, the Launcher has stopped.

Really a pain.. I am running at the API level 19, so probably due to internal program bloat...

Once I raised the VM heap memory from 16 to 48, I noted that a special help program runs, with a big outline of a hand pointing at the "Downloads" app, and explaining that you can press and hold any app to move it to the main screen.

I am running on a WIN-XP (32-bit) old dual core Centrino Toshiba Satellite Pro, so maybe on newer 64-bit machines, the error does not show up. But thanks, Rajeesh.

I just used AVD Manager to edit the parameter screen for the ARMeabi-v7a emulated target device, and now the emulator launches successfully, and I can see (and run) my first "Hello World" app, built with the Eclipse ADT stuff. - Mark_L

Answer 2

It was a memory issue. Problem fixed on incrementing the default value of VM heap by a factor of 16. (16 to 32 and 32 to 48).

Answer 3

I know this should be more a comment then an answer, but I'm too new to StackOverflow. Hopefully a mod transfers this answer.

Are you using an Intel image? Because those ARM images are really slow. When you want to use an Intel image you should also install HAXM (https://stackoverflow.com/a/10772162/1741111). Be sure to select it the right settings. 768 RAM is the maximum on Windows.

These are my settings: