RAM

[dedotch]

What is the max ram I can use with XP

 

[gpalmer711]

4GB on XP Pro 32bit - see

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[Sleepsalot]

gpalmer711 is correct the max is 4 gb. But it Depends on what your mother board is capable of.

Wayne

Life is a big Roleplaying adventure.

 

[cpjust]

This makes it sound like you can use 64GB in 32-bit XP:

Physical Address Extension. PAE is an Intel-provided memory address extension that enables support of up to 64 GB of physical memory for applications running on most 32-bit (IA-32) Intel Pentium Pro and later platforms. Support for PAE is provided under Windows 2000 and 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. 64-bit versions of Windows do not support PAE.

Is that a typo? I thought only the expensive server versions can use >4GB?

 

[cpjust]

OK, it must be a typo, because I have an 32-bit XP Pro system with 8GB RAM, and I tried using the /PAE switch in boot.ini and it only saw 3.5GB.

 

[Freestone]

4GB with PAE and XP....see the table in the Introduction section:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

Anticipating the question of why PAE in XP if it only allows 4GB (from the same link above):

Although support for PAE memory is typically associated with support for more than 4 GB of RAM, PAE can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and later 32-bit versions of Windows to support hardware enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP).

 

[Sleepsalot]

THis is a link to MS page about memory.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

Wayne

Life is a big Roleplaying adventure.

 

[cpjust]

That looks a lot like the first link that was posted. ;-)

 

[Sleepsalot]

Hi cpjust, You are right. Sorry my mistake.

Wayne

Life is a big Roleplaying adventure.

 

[linney]

RAM, Virtual Memory, PageFile and all that stuff

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

 

[cdogg]

The limit is 4GB, unless you have a particular flavor of Windows (see below).

This link is slightly different from the one you were looking at, but has more detail:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx

This part from that link explains why some versions of 32-bit Windows have been capped at 4GB (even when the PAE switch is used):

Typically, device drivers must be modified in a number of small ways. Although the actual code changes may be small, they can be difficult. This is because when not using PAE memory addressing, it is possible for a device driver to assume that physical addresses and 32-bit virtual address limits are identical. PAE memory makes this assumption untrue...

...PAE mode can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later versions of Windows to support hardware-enforced DEP. However, many device drivers designed for these systems may not have been tested on system configurations with PAE enabled. In order to limit the impact to device driver compatibility, changes to the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) were made to Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 Standard Edition to limit physical address space to 4 GB...

Of course other 32-bit version of Windows such as 2000 Advanced Server, 2003 Datacenter, and 2003 Enterprise are able to access up to 64GB using PAE. Microsoft educates system administrators to test hardware and application compatibility extensively when this is used. In their eyes, the level of complexity introduced by PAE made is too unstable and unnecessary for typical end-user configurations, which is why you don't see the support in non-server 32-bit versions of 2000, XP, and Vista.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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