After I updated my Samsung Series 9 SSD laptop with 8GB of RAM to Windows 8.1, (not even a year old, and top-of-line when purchased last november), I am now unable to run the Windows Phone emulator while debugging my WP8 app.

The error messages I see is:

"Not enough memory in the system to start the virtual machine emulator WVGA 512MB.user with ram size 512 megabytes"

Well, the instant I attempt to run a build, it the machine immediately goes from 25% memory consumed to 80% consumed. Even after I close Visual Studio Express 2012, still it is stuck at 80% memory consumption according to the task manager. At this point, I am unable to run the Windows Phone emulator to test my app.

How can I work around this issue without replacing my hardware?

Thanks!