Just a reminder for myself, but I like to share it here. I really disliked eclipse, because it needs more than a minute to start up on my system. My colleague Tim pointed me to a tip to speedup eclipse on a windows xp machine. What should i say – its running way faster now.

Step 1: Locate your eclipse installation

Locate your eclipse installation on your HD, e.g. in program files:

C:\Program Files\eclipse\eclipse.exe

Step 2: Create a shortcut

Right-click on eclipse.exe, goto “Sent To” and select “Desktop (create shortcut)“.

Step 3: Add parameters

Switch to your desktop (Shortcut: Windows-Key + D), right-click the new shortcut called “eclipse.exe” and select properties. In the tab “Shortcut” add the parameters ” -vmargs -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m” to the target. It should look like this:

C:\Program Files\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vmargs -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m

1024m = 1024 MB = 1 GB RAM

Save your changes to the newly created shortcut and open eclipse. It should already start up faster. If not, please check Eclipse and memory settings.

Step 4 (optional): “Show heap status” in eclipse

In eclipse, goto “Window > Preferences > General”. Activate “Show heap status” and apply. Now you should see the heap status in the lower right corner.

Note: I wrote this entry for “dummies-like-me”, not for geeks ;) You can speedup a lot of java-based programs by adding additional ram with these arguments.