So close, yet so far...

Hello. I am a user of Minecraft, and have been playing it for about four years. I recently tried to create a Forge server for my friend and I to play a modded game of minecraft together. Unfortunately, the mod in question was out of date; I decided to scrap it and just proceed to try to make the server itself. I almost completed it, and I ran into two problems. The first was when I tried to edit the -Xmx1024M to make the server have more RAM, it said I didn't have enough space for it- even though I have 77 gigabytes of space on my computer. The second problem arises from the fact that I am almost completely computer illiterate; I could not figure out

a. How to port forward. I went into my router and added a port forwarding thing, but I don't think I did it right.

b. Where to look in the server to find the required information for port forwarding.

c. How to tell if I've started the server successfully.

d. What exactly to put in the Minecraft Server Address box in the Minecraft game.

Any help with any of the above problems I would be happy to receive.

Sincerely, Nedacman

The first was when I tried to edit the -Xmx1024M to make the server have more RAM, it said I didn't have enough space for it- even though I have 77 gigabytes of space on my computer.

I highly doubt you have 77 GB of free RAM. This value is how much RAM Minecraft (or rather Java) can use, not disk space.

You were right here, I was looking in the wrong place.

a. How to port forward. I went into my router and added a port forwarding thing, but I don't think I did it right.

You can test if you did it correctly, by running the server and then using a port-forward tester like http://www.canyouseeme.org/ to see if the port is open.

The tester says it timed out. I'm using my IP address and the 25565 port.

b. Where to look in the server to find the required information for port forwarding.

You can set the port that the server listens on in the server.properties file. The default is 25565.

It says it's a .PROPERTIES file, and my computer can't open/edit that file type, to my knowledge.

c. How to tell if I've started the server successfully.

Run a game on the same computer and connect to localhost. If you can connect, the server is running.

How exactly do you do that?

d. What exactly to put in the Minecraft Server Address box in the Minecraft game.

The IP of the server running the game. If you are on the same Network (then you don't need to open ports in your router, either), use the local IP of the computer. On Windows you can use the ipconfig command to find it. If you want to connect to it over the internet (this is where you need the port-forwarding), you need the public IP of your router. There are many websites that tell you your public IP, one of them is https://www.whatismyip.com.

The computers I am trying to connect to are not on the same network, and, like I stated above, my IP address is not working.