There's a problem on all Windows systems that there's a limitation on graphical primitives that can be used system-wide. Which leads to the following: once I've started several (actually something like 25+) GUI-rich apps like Visual Studio or Internet Explorer I can't open any more windows - depending on how the application reacts to this either nothing happens or an error is reported.
Is there anything I can tune in Windows to at least make the upper limit on these primitives higher?
Take a look at this MSDN article. It explains how to increase the limit of GDI objects in your system
This MSDN article explains how to increase the limit of User object.
This Microsoft NTDebugging article explains at length how the Desktop Heap can be exhausted and prevent opening additional windows. Indeed, this was THE crucial solution to my own problem of opening an extreme amount of programs on a Windows 2000 and Windows XP workstation. I had to increase my "3072" value to "8192" before I fixed it, after that, I've NEVER run out of handles again, even with 310 Chrome Tabs open simultaneously plus about 20 other applications on a 4GB RAM WinXP 32-bit system.
